RE: Nike Rolls Out Controversial Colin Kaepernick Ad (Culture Hacking) - What's Your Thoughts?
I kind of see the situation from a few different angles. Personally I think that Colin could have focused on making YouTube videos, or posting online to bring attention to out of control cops beating up people and planting drugs on innocent people. These days big name athletes have so much visibility through social media that I think that would have been a better route.
As a career move it can't feel good that he is in his prime athletic years and that he isn't getting to play on a team.
A similar situation on a smaller scale happened a while back in the NBA with Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. In 1996 he wouldn't stand for the national anthem and the NBA kept fining him. They finally reached an agreement and he started standing again. He was putting up some crazy numbers but he kind of got black balled a few years later. He ended up having an interesting career over seas and now he is playing in the Big3 league which is Ice Cubes 3 on 3 professional league featuring former NBA Stars.
https://big3.com/players/mahmoud-abdul-rauf/
I think ultimately the NFL will lose the lawsuit that Colin filed against him and he will be let back into the league.
Again I don't really feel like it was the right way to go about it or bring light to an issue but since we are talking about it let's watch a video of an out of control cop beating up someone for no reason.
I come it at from I think a similar angle. To me I don't think the issue is police brutality, don't get me wrong that's an issue but that's not the issue with Kapernick and the NFL, to me the issue is individual rights while on the job.
If he weren't an NFL player and worked at Burger King and wanted to not wear his uniform and wear a shirt with a protest message he'd be fired and we'd never hear another word about it. It's because his job isn't a typical job, because he has fame and notoriety that this is even an issue.
Ultimately I think it's important to allow a private business to want to run their business how they see fit and I think it's understandable they want to convey a certain message. Many companies don't want to go anywhere near divisive issues because they don't want to take a stand one way or the other and alienate half their customer base. I think the NFL is totally within their right to be conerned that his actions right or wrong are going to affect their business and ratings and are overall just going to be a distraction for the players, the sport, the league, the games.
I agree, I think if athletes and celebs and singers want to use their notoriety and platform to voice their issues on topics I applaud them for that but I definitely kind of think there's a time and a place, at least with the NFL where the players are employees and sign codes of conduct and such.
What is interesting is that he seems to have taken the brunt of everything but at one point that swept the entire league and even the Dallas Cowboys and their owner were kneeling during the national anthem which is interesting.
That's actually a great point and I didn'teven really think about that. At some points entire teams had jumped on board but really he's been singled out and been the most affected and kind of blackballed because of it
The weird thing to me is that I never really saw any YouTube videos or interviews of him explaining more about what he was trying to say with the whole thing and that he wasn't disrespecting the military, police officers, firefighters....etc.
It might have been out there but I never saw it.
I got in a conversation when one chick casually about it and she got real amped up about how he was disrespecting people in the military which I never saw it that way at all.
Overtime the way I view most members in the military changed some and if I say this to some people they would get offended but in general in a lot of ways I always kind of looked at it this way.
But in a lot of ways I looked at it as a career choice if someone wasn't drafted into it. Like I have a friend at home who didn't have a lot of options as far as college was concerned but he was a really smart guy and when he was 19 he decided to go into the Army. He scored really well on the testing and he is athletic so he really excelled and made the Army a great career for him and his rank is pretty high for enlisted. Like E8 or E9 I believe. I'm not really sure. But regardless he is going to be able to retire after 20 years and have another career and ultimately it turned out to be a good decision for him since he wasn't infantry or anything like that.
So when I talk to people in the military I always ask what their specialty is and ask them questions because I'm curious and end up saying "That's cool bro" I'm respectful about the situation but I guess what I'm saying is I don't automatically bow down and start declaring people a hero because they signed up for the Military.
I guess a hero to me is someone who is walking by and suddenly sees a burning house and runs in there and saves a kid and the family hamster but it wasn't their occupation and they could have easily just ran away from the situation.
I'm not trying to make light of military service or anything but if a random person tackles a crazy person shooting people with an assault rifle, or a person whips out a pocket knife and stabs a great white shark in the eye who is attacking a fellow surfer, or some guy who puts a grizzly bear into a headlock to save a toddler from getting eaten. I feel like all those people are in a different category because it wasn't their occupation and they aren't getting paid. They just jump into action out of nowhere.
I wanted to be in the military not because I thought people would look at me as a hero or that I was some huge patriot protecting everyone. I just wanted to fly fighter jets. Not to shoot at anyone but just to fly really fucking fast.