Sunday, August 16, 2020

The NFL Nixes Live Anthem Performances


              According to Front Office Sports, the National Football League won’t allow any live performances of the national anthem prior to NFL games this season. The league is also considering limiting the presence of military and police honor guards on its fields, a sea-change from even one season ago. The league claims the changes are simply a good-faith attempt to limit the number of people with access to the field to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Of course. Surely the NFL isn’t using the pandemic as an excuse to pander to left-wing protesters/rioters/social-justice-warriors and their aiders and abettors! No one would even suggest that the league is attempting to cuddle up to the BLM movement! Perish the thought!
              In fact, the league will allow recordings of the Star-Spangled Banner to be played before games. Oddly enough, however, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” a.k.a. the Black National Anthem, will be played before every Week 1 NFL contest, prior to the national anthem, and may well be performed live in a number of stadiums.
The league will also employ other measures to recognize victims of police brutality and support anti-racism initiatives. ESPN’s The Undefeated reports that the NFL will collaborate with the NFL Players’ Association in listing the names of victims on uniforms-- via helmet decals or jersey patches—and will also place social justice messages in the end zones during Week 1 instead of team names. The messages will include “End Racism” and “It Takes All of Us.” How about “Bad Things Suck?” This is a pathetically entry-level attempt at virtue-signaling for the most powerful sports league on Earth. Additionally, the NFL is apparently going to produce educational programs about victims and has other plans to take advantage of the current climate of hatred, division and self-loathing that The Left has so successfully sowed.
Perhaps the league will sponsor “BLM Nights” at stadiums around the fruited plain and offer discounts to Antifa members, as well. Maybe it will introduce graduated ticket pricing, whereby a straight white Christian male, for example, would pay $300 for “ticket X,” but a non-binary, agnostic person of color would get the same ticket for $22.50.
A famous NFL owner used to exclaim, “Just win, baby!” Today that would be amended to, “Just virtue-signal, baby!”
Let’s hope that the NFL soon stands for “No Fans League”


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