Protesting, Quietly

DONALD TRUMP made it quite clear: the owners of NFL teams should fir or suspend all players who kneel instead of stand during the national anthem. Considering what a horrible melody the Star spangled Banner is, the mere act of singing it, or listening to it being sung can become difficult in any position, standing, kneeling, sitting, or lying down, which might be the best option, to ward of nausea. We should be grateful that the more musically inclined don't bend over and become ill, of lean back and fall asleep. The lyrics are great. the tune comes from an eighteenth century English pub drinking song, and is best sung while drunk. Increasing numbers of NFL players are kneeling, including some white ones, in support of their black brothers in shoulder pads. If Trump gets his twittering wish, there wouldn't be enough players on the field to scrimmage, let alone to fill out rosters. Trump, as he usually does, like his right wing acolytes, entirely misses the point. The purpose of protesting, anything, is to attract attention, to gain publicity for whatever cause is being advocated, which in this case is, of course, racial equality. For this purpose, it would hardly do to kneel before a Taylor Swift tune, Miley Cyrus, maybe. Can we soon expect the white boys to boycott their beloved football teams? Stay tuned. the protestors aren't going away, not as long as they garner the attention of the leader of the previously enslaved world, and his backward looking minions. Martin Luther King did not lead his freedom marchers down back alleys and side streets. They walked right down main street, dodging German Shepherds, fir hoses, and hateful honkie hordes, disrupting traffic. King and his followers were labeled "trouble makers" by about ninety nine percent of white America. They evinced the same sort of cracker jack comments as our contemporary kneeling gridiron gladiators. how dare these trouble makers be so ungrateful to their American hosts for the twin blessings of Christian doctrine, which condones slavery, biblically, and for the opportunity to live apart from the mainstream, in segregated poverty, free from the greater burdens of white supremacy, free to donate their labor to the greater society surrounding them. If, after all these blessings, they still must, for some inexplicable reason, protest, they could at least be good enough to it quietly, unobtrusively, in the privacy of their own closets and black only bathrooms.