Goodell’s ‘compromise’ is a sham, anthem dispute is far from over

LLANO, Texas — When two parties in conflict reach a compromise, you might assume they’ve been negotiating.  There had to be meetings.  Or at least some texting or emailing.  Each side gets something it wants and gives up something of value.  Art of the Deal, right?

But when Roger Goodell announced last week that the National Football League had “compromised” on The Anthem Issue, he meant that after 20 months of hateful contention between owners and players, the owners will punish as they choose, and the losers will be allowed to continue working for them.

The owners negotiated only with themselves.  They never consulted the Players Association as they constructed a policy that requires all league personnel to “stand and show respect” while The Star-Spangled Banner is playing.  Or their teams will be fined an amount to be determined later.

The “compromise” is that players are not required to be on the field for the anthem, which they’ve never been required to do.  They can sit in the locker room and soak, talk, text or tweet.  How Jeffersonian can you get?

Of course, this will lead to weekly media coverage of which players refused to stand while the troops were being honored.   How long before the President says those hiding out in locker rooms are traitors?  He’s already said that players “should stand proudly” for the anthem and those who don’t “maybe shouldn’t be in this country.”  So we return nostalgically to the Sixties and Love It or Leave It.

Am I out on a ledge in saying this will get uglier?  What happens to those who raise a big black fist during the anthem?  Is that respectful enough?  And what does respect mean if it’s forced?  Are we the USA?  Or North Korea?

And if respecting the anthem is so essential, what do we do to people selling and guzzling beer while it’s playing?  And what about Kansas City altering the sacred lyrics to end with “land of the free and the home of the Chiefs”?  Did Roger Goodell just step into the world’s biggest Pandora’s box?

For now he’s in control and will be until the current collective bargaining agreement ends with the 2020 season.  The unemployed Colin Kaepernick is Exhibit A on what misfortune befalls anyone who defies the football oligarchs.

Exhibit B is Eric Reid, a 26-year-old safety who was a first-round draft pick and a Pro Bowl player as Kaepernick’s teammate in San Francisco.  He’s a free agent nobody wants, because he kneeled, repeatedly, to express disapproval of American police and courts administering one sort of justice to white people and quite another to the darker-skinned.

The protesting by the football players has brought more scrutiny to law enforcement, more body cameras, more prosecutions of trigger-happy cops.  But disgusting racial incidents are still common, a throwback to the 1950s South.  Now in the 20teens they’re happening all corners of the republic.

Black men for decades have joked about extra attention from police when they venture into the more exclusive urban neighborhoods.  “Driving While Black,” they call it.  Liberal whitefolk call it “profiling.”

Sterling Brown, 22-year-old rookie guard of the Milwaukee Bucks, has learned what can happen to those caught Parking While Black.

Last week the police chief of Milwaukee, Alfonso Morals, lived up to his name as people rarely do.  He did the right thing and released video showing his officers doing a very wrong thing.  One of their body cams recorded Brown groaning as he’s taken to the ground by police in the earliest hours of Friday, January 26.

File this under Nothing Good Happens After 2 a.m.  That’s about the time Brown parked in a Walgreens lot that at this forsaken hour had many choices of empty spaces.  But Sterling, being a not overly mature male of 22, chose to position his vehicle across two spaces that were outlined for the handicapped, or as the guardians of the language insist they prefer to be called, “disabled.”  Surely you’d rather be disabled than merely handicapped like a golfer.

A night watchman thought Brown’s parking style suspicious and clearly illegal, if utterly inconsequential.  He confronted the driver after he exited the drugstore and returned to his car.  The cop asked for ID and touched Brown, who objected to the hand-check.  Whereupon the frantic officer called for “backup.”   Nine minutes later Brown was writhing on the ground and screaming, “Taser! Taser!”

Later, Brown tweeted: “What should have been a simple parking ticket turned into an attempt at police intimidation, followed by the unlawful use of force, including being handcuffed and Tased and unlawfully booked.”  He intends to sue the city of Milwaukee for civil rights violations.

Where I live, deep in the heart of Trumpland, there’s no wellspring of empathy for young Sterling: “If he parked like a white man, there woulda been no problem.”  

To the Trumpy right the anthem protest is about disrespecting the flag and the troops.  To the Kaepernick crowd it’s about cops shooting too many unarmed, usually young, black men.  To the NFL owners it’s about TV ratings slipping 10% because of players kneeling.  A Washington Post poll indicated 53% of Americans agree with the new NFL policy.

Commissioner Goodell said the anthem rule passed by unanimous vote of the owners last week in Atlanta.  But the 49ers’ Jed York, Raiders’ Mark Davis and Jets CEO Christopher Johnson abstained.  In fact, there was no formal vote, just a flurry of hands that, apparently, nobody had time to count.

Johnson said he will cover the fines accumulated by his players.  Another bright idea?  How large can these fines be?  Philadelphia’s Jeff Lurie and Miami’s Stephen Ross said players should protest racial injustice, but unlike Johnson they did not commit cash to the cause.  So how much do Black Lives Matter and how unified are these owners?

The NFL probably reflects the divisiveness of the rest of the country.  The Left cannot see how the Right’s agenda has much in common with the founders, most of whom believed in owning guns, slashing taxes and making sure white men are treated well.  What’s so different about Donald Trump?

The founders wrote a constitution with compromises they could live with at the time.  They let their successors adapt and amend as needed.  The First Amendment protected freedom of speech and the Second one our guns.  Now we see these two forces warring like they never have before.  Hope you had a happy Memorial Day.

At some point Goodell sits down with the Players Association to seek a genuine compromise, not a Trumped-up one.  There should be ways to oppose police brutality without throwing shade on the flag.  Goodell should not assume the union is too ineffectual to strike in 2021 if his powers aren’t reduced.  This dispute is serious but not irresolvable.  Isn’t this the country that saved the world and went to the moon?  We can’t find a path to peace in pro football?