Trump made a big deal out of the people in the stands at this weekend’s NFL games who booed the players who kneeled during the anthem — because in Trump’s world of narcissism, public opinion is the only thing that matters. Unless it’s against Trump, of course. Then it’s not valid, like the polls that have his popularity down to about a third of the country.
Still, we must remember that when it comes to big social issues like civil rights, it doesn’t matter how many people express their outrage by booing. They can let off all the obnoxious steam they want. It doesn’t matter.
It didn’t matter when they screamed at Martin Luther King as he led the Selma march. It didn’t matter when they booed Tommie Smith and Juan Carlos as they raised their fists on the Olympics medal stand in 1968. It didn’t matter when racist southerners yelled at National Guardsmen protecting African-American students who were just trying to go to school. It didn’t matter when love-it-or-leave-it types yelled at college students protesting the Vietnam War. It didn’t matter when homophobes tried to intimidate the first gay couples who applied for marriage licenses.
The virtue of being in the right is not diminished by the volume of your opposition.
Here is one of the voices of reason, longtime Dallas sportscaster Dale Hansen, who I have featured here before. Once again, he says exactly the right thing about the NFL/anthem controversy and the hypocrites who don’t understand it…