CARLTON FLETCHER: ‘Sunshine patriots’ lash out at NFL

You never turned around to see the frowns On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you.

— Bob Dylan

I love sports … always have. I loved to play them back when there was less time in the rearview mirror, but since nobody’s giving out-to-pasture ex-high school jocks fat contracts to play games these days — and wouldn’t even pick you last for a pickup game — I’ve long since settled into spectator mode (other, that is, than the occasional one-on-one basketball games with the 15-year-old daughter who’s no jock but can still leave me feeling old).

Watching a Major League Baseball game these days can be a Zen experience under the right circumstances. Except for the first couple of rounds of March Madness, basketball has become more boring than golf — especially at the NBA level — so much so that I’d rather watch a hockey game, this from a Southern boy who’d only ever encountered ice in a cold drink.

College football’s fine for all the enthusiasm it generates, although I’ve never quite been able to figure out the fanaticism of people whose entire wardrobe has their favorite school’s logo, yet the wearer never even went to that school.

But the NFL is America’s sport. With its barely controlled mayhem — exhibited by gigantic freaks of nature — pro football is perfect for a nation that loves its violence. There’s something very American about watching behemoths club away at each other in an effort to maim the gifted — and smaller — passers, runners and catchers they loathe, leaving various ligaments, tendons, bones and lots of brain cells, it turns out, in their wake.

The men who play in the NFL, circa 2017, though, remind me more and more of lyrics from Bob Dylan’s 1965 classic “Like a Rolling Stone,” the part where he asks if the person in his sights has seen “the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you.” These guys are performers, well-trained, well-fed genetic lottery winners given large sums of money to play out a made-up turf war for the enjoyment of lesser men who envy them and women who just like the cut of their jib, so to speak.

I find it hilarious, then, that people are so up in arms over these men’s actions while the national anthem is playing before NFL games. Heck, the person who is supposed to be the leader of the free world has even taken time out from his wall-building 101 class to call the jugglers and clowns “SOBs” because they didn’t want to put on a false face of patriotism to appease the blue-collar fans who pay their overinflated salaries and keep billionaire owners rolling in Botox.

To which I have to ask: Who freaking cares?

If the soldiers who’ve sworn an oath to protect this country refuse to stand at attention during the playing of a song when ordered to do so, yeah, that’s a problem. And when people we’ve elected to represent us show disrespect for a national symbol like the American flag, we can gripe.

But football players? Who really cares?

I do find it quite hilarious, though, that self-proclaimed “patriots” (not the ones in New England … still hate them for that Super Bowl thing … move on) are mad as hell at the NFL and they’re not going to watch it anymore. A large percentage of these people define their “patriotism” by hollow gestures. What they’re telling these arrogant NFL athletes is that you become a patriot by doing the things I do, believing the things I believe. No questions.

Which is fine, I guess, for you. But America’s enduring greatness is its people’s ability to assimilate and allow for differences and, yes, even for radical actions when such are called for.

If the American colonists hadn’t had the guts to say “no more” to outlandish British taxation, we’d all have bad teeth and be drinking tea with no sugar or ice now instead of beer. And we’d still be working 80 hours a week for inequitable pay. (This exception does not apply to newspaper editors.)

If we’d remained good little patriots like we’d been told by the people in power, black people would count as three-fifths of a person, women would not be allowed to vote, we’d still be fighting a losing war in Indochina, and we’d all be out looking for the commies lurking behind every tree.

Do I believe the NFL players are legitimate spokesmen for inequity in this country? Of course not. They’re, for the most part, spoiled overgrown rich kids who feel guilty about having all that money while people in their old neighborhoods are starving, so they “grew” a collective social conscience that lasts through the playing of the national anthem … then they beat the hell out of each other for a couple of hours and get paid.

You don’t like their outspokenness because it shines a light on some of our nation’s ugliness? Don’t watch. You join the so-called commander-in-chief in cursing them because it riles up the Rebel in you? Well, yee-haw, brother, get over it.

These “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots” that Thomas Paine (the original T. Paine) wrote about speak in reverent tones of the sacrifices of all the men and women who have given their lives for this country without realizing the irony of their statements. That sacrifice was for groups like the NFL players, or Black Lives Matter or the freaking Klan to have the freedom to do what they do, no matter how unsavory or disgusting we find their actions.

So I’ll keep watching football because it’s a game I love. And I’ll check my social consciousness at the foot of the couch. (By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever really listened to the national anthem before a game unless it was one I was at. That’s when I get snacks or go to the bathroom.) What so many of these would-be patriots don’t seem to get — especially that one way up the food chain — is that the way to kill off a showy bout of self-righteousness is to ignore it.

Not match it with your own.

Staff Photo