In an ESPN.com story that will also run in ESPN The Magazine Oct. 30, resident liberal Howard Bryant says NFL flag/anthem protesters have succeeded in the tactical decision to center their grievances against police brutality around the American flag. But they have lost the language battle and allowed themselves to be labeled as "traitors."
Bryant writes: "The players have gotten the attention of a public largely unused to political demands from athletes; of owners who now resort to collusion and intimidation to counter the rising power of players and the perceived threat to their business model; and of a president who brands his disregard for the first stop in the Bill of Rights with a hashtag, #StandForOurAnthem."
The field-position battle of language, Bryant writes, is where America's most contentious social struggles have been fought. And here's where the defiant players have lost and lost badly. He says these players have gotten the world's attention, but when it comes to articulating injustice to the public, the "players' captive audience is watching them lose not just badly but Cleveland Browns badly":
When trying to win a sympathetic ear from the public for a political position (or to demonize the opponent), language is the battle. In this most recent struggle, the NFL players have the moral position. The American injustice of law enforcement resorting to using full, often fatal force in too many encounters with black citizens is a scourge worth fighting, but the players have allowed themselves to be positioned as traitors.
Bryant accuses protesting players of allowing the White House and NFL owners -- the Cowboys' Jerry Jones in particular
-- to pit them against the military. They've also allowed their movement "to be framed as a protest against patriotism; when you're pitted against your own country, no matter how correct you might be, you cannot win."
Players bear responsibility, Bryant writes, for letting the media and the public to inaccurately define their protest against injustice as an anthem protest, which is "fatally toxic."
If what Bryant says about the media is true, then it's the tiny percentage of the media that is not guided by and committed to liberal bias. He went on to allege:
It is not merely a semantic joust. Who in America has a negative reaction to protesting the anthem? Most everyone. Who has a problem with protesting injustice? Most no one. But without a clear message, the perception that the players are standing against the primary symbol of the country will repel the undecided and make even the more committed pause.
Arguing that the flag isn't the target will fail; when the public hears "anthem protest," it shuts down, and Philando Castile, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice (Black men who died in conflicts with police officers) are denied justice a second time because the listening stops. Players, from Colin Kaepernick to (the Oakland Athletics' catcher) Bruce Maxwell, are in fact engaged in an injustice protest. It doesn't pit them against their country; in fact, dissent confirms them as American. They are in the right, and yet they are losing ground every day.
Bryant blames the players' loss in the court of public opinion on their inexperience. They're athletes by day who are moonlighting as activists by night. They lack the years of experience it takes to control the words of the fight and have allowed it to be defined for them.
And while the clock ticks away on the protesters, they can't reach the public "whose reflex is denial of black grievance." Bryant also makes the remarkable assertion that team owners are not committed to ending police violence, when that is not their job.
Bryant fears the players' movement will die because they do not recognize that "hearts and minds are won by the justness of the cause and the language of the message," not for being wrong but because "they surrendered the shaping of the dialogue and did not reiterate the purpose of their movement."
The language arguments of Bryant are reminiscent of Democrats' reactions to election losses as a mere matter of not getting their message out. When the real story is that the American people rejected that message. The majority of Americans disagree with the forum of NFL protests, which should be handled outside the work place on personal time and not directed at the flag, the national anthem and the veterans who sacrificed life and limb defending liberty throughout our history. Athletes who are rich, pampered and bitter grossly miscalculated the public and now, to paraphrase former Monday Night Football commentator Dandy Don Meredith, the protest party's over.
