Dave Zirin : The NFL Player Protest Against Donald Trump

[calm]

The mass player protest against Donald Trump
The journalist reflects on the mass player protest against Donald Trump.
PBS - Tavis Smiley
Host Tavis Smiley interviews Dave Zirin
September 25, 2017
(Flash Video)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/sportswriter-dave-zirin

Transcript:

TAVIS SMILEY: Dave Zirin is the first and only sports editor in the Nation magazine's 150-year history. He is also founder of the website and podcast, edgeofsports.com. He joins us now from Washington. Dave, good to have you on the program, as always, sir.
DAVE ZIRIN: Oh, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
TAVIS SMILEY: I saw some of your written work today. Let me start with this one line that jumped out at me, and I suspect your other followers. "It's exhausting to have a president who gets angrier at outspoken Black athletes than at Nazis." Take it away.
DAVE ZIRIN: No, that's absolutely right. It is exhausting and I think this last weekend was exhausting for so many people who consider themselves part of the NFL community.
This idea that we have so many problems facing this country right now, whether we're talking about the devastation in Puerto Rico, the tension with North Korea, the issues still that exist in Houston and Florida in the wake of the hurricanes that hit those wonderful places, and yet the president is taking his time.
The President of the United States on the biggest bully pulpit we have is in Alabama calling NFL players SOBs and calling for them to be fired. This is the sort of thing that gets so exhausting and that's what made what happened on Sunday so exhilarating. I mean, we have never seen anything like this in the history of sports and resistance.
We all remember the late 60s. Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, Tommie Smith, into the 70s with Billie Jean King. But you never had over 100 NFL players in front of thousands of people, millions of people at home and the entire world, take part in a protest during the national anthem.
And while the protests began with Colin Kaepernick to speak out against racism and police brutality and inequities in the criminal justice system, I think what you saw Sunday was a response to the exhausting nature of Donald Trump.
Josh Norman who plays for the Washington football team, this is what he said. He said, "You know, it felt like he was coming up to our house and just urinating on the lawn and, at some point, you have to say that person, 'Hey, get off of my lawn!'".
These were NFL players saying do not threaten our livelihood, do not threaten our Constitutional freedoms, and definitely do not talk about our mothers! That will not be tolerated! And Donald Trump, I mean, I think he got smacked down.
I think when he was talking to that audience, he thought to himself, "Oh, I'm going to demonize dissenting Black athletes before this white Alabama audience and they are going to eat it up. It's gonna be great." And by late Friday night, early Saturday morning, he probably thought he had the most winning issue in the world.
What he did not expect and what he did not understand maybe because he did not play football himself and only lived vicariously through the violence on the field, what he did not understand is what they call in the NFL the "brotherhood" and that's the idea that players will stick up for each other if one of them is attacked.
TAVIS SMILEY: There's a lot to unpack and I'm glad I have you, Dave, for the full show. Let me start with this. You referenced the name Colin Kaepernick. Let me just ask very pointblank and very direct. Does this mean that it's just a matter of time before we see him on a team?
DAVE ZIRIN: Not necessarily, but I would also say that this is also bigger than Colin Kaepernick. You know, Dr. Harry Edwards, the famed sports sociologist, he made this point where he said, "Look, the Montgomery bus boycott, the end goal was not about getting Miss Rosa Parks a seat on the bus. It was about something much bigger than that." That connects to Colin Kaepernick.
While, yes, Rosa Parks should have been able to sit on the bus and, yes, Colin Kaepernick should be able to get a job in the National Football League. This really is now about something much bigger than Colin Kaepernick. And I can tell you from communicating with Colin Kaepernick that's something he absolutely realizes. He wants to play in the National Football League very much.
But he also wants to see these issues, particularly these issues of the fact that we have white supremacist president and we have racism in this country and that police killings have actually gone up in 2017 relative to 2016, yet we're not talking about this. That's really what we need to stay focused on.
But I will say this. Given the fact that so many NFL owners came out and said in word that they are against Trump's divisiveness and they are against Trump's attacks on their league, it's gonna be very difficult for them now to indeed not sign Colin Kaepernick, especially because the quarterback play in this league over the first three weeks was somewhere between abysmal and atrocious.
Something like 19 quarterbacks right now have worse quarterback ratings than Colin Kaepernick had all last year. It's very clear to the players involved from Aaron Rogers to Tom Brady — I mean, we're talking like the most famous players in the game who, it must be pointed out, are white –are saying this guy belongs on an NFL team and it's absurd that he is not on an NFL team.
So now that NFL owners, many of whom were some of the biggest financial backers of Donald Trump, have broken away from Trump because — I mean, it's really Trump who broke away from them with his comments about their league — I think what you could see now is there's more space for Colin Kaepernick to get signed. But whether it happens, I think we're just gonna have to wait and see.
TAVIS SMILEY: I appreciate your writing, Dave, and always enjoy talking to you because, at your best, you are a truthteller and you have a freedom that allows you to do that. I have never met Jemele Hill of ESPN, but I love her, I adore her. I appreciate her work because she, too, is a truthteller.
And I raise that only because we all know what happened a few weeks ago when she tweeted that Donald Trump was a white supremacist. The White House went ballistic, demanded that ESPN fire her. I raise that only because I'm curious now as to how much more freedom you think this gives sports journalists to tell the truth that they perhaps should have been telling a while ago.
DAVE ZIRIN: No, it's a fascinating question and I know I'm in a bit of a unique situation because the publication I work for has no economic or financial connection to the National Football League. That means that I have more studio space than Jemele Hill who I absolutely consider to be a friend of mine and who is somebody who ESPN punished for saying what she said on social media.
Then, of course, as you said, the Trump administration responded by saying, "Hey, we are not white supremacists. Now this Black woman should lose her job", which is really something.
So now the Trump administration — think about who they have called to lose their jobs. Colin Kaepernick, that was during the year of 2017. Trump in several speeches said he should not be signed. Jemele Hill, and now these NFL players who've been protesting, calling for them to be fired.
And I don't think it takes, you know, a Rorschach test to see what all these folks have in common and what the agenda is and who Donald Trump is actually trying to demonize in this situation. Will there be more space now for ESPN, for Fox Sports, for these other places to talk about these issues? I mean, absolutely. There has to be. And I think we saw that in the coverage of the games yesterday.
What I thought was so fascinating even more than some of the games yesterday — and there were some very good NFL games — was watching the pregame shows. I mean, if you had told me — I knew before yesterday. I knew this from talking to players that it would be an unprecedented show of dissent by players on the field.
I certainly did not expect people like Rex Ryan, the former Buffalo and Jets coach who campaigned for Trump to take Trump to the woodshed. I did not expect Terry Bradshaw who is, in so many respects, this like southern quarterback icon who's been in the American eye for so many decades,
I did not expect him to go after Donald Trump, to actually lecture to Donald Trump as if Donald Trump was a child on the pregame show on Fox and say, "I don't think Donald Trump understands the freedoms that we have in this country." I mean, it was a remarkable show of solidarity by the NFL community. And I'll tell you something else that I don't think Donald Trump understood.
It's when you're talking about the dissenting players in the National Football League — and I'm thinking of people like Malcolm Jenkins who raises his fist during the anthem, or Michael Bennett who sits during the anthem — these players are some of the most respected players in the National Football League by coaches, by assistant coaches, by executives, because they're frankly some of the smartest players in the National Football League.
They're in the locker room not only understanding and dissecting plays as if they have a Ph.D. in football, but they're also speaking about issues in the real world, meeting with people on Capitol Hill, and earning the respect of their teammates.
So when Donald Trump says Malcolm Jenkins should be fired, that sends a shiver up the entire Philadelphia Eagles organization because they love Malcolm Jenkins not just for what he does on the field, but for who he is in the locker room.
So for all of these reasons, I really truly do believe that there is more space now for sports writers to talk about politics, to engage in these issues. I still expect ESPN at times to act like, you know, a scalded kitty cat whenever the right wing echo chamber says to them, oh, you're too this, you're too that.
I also fully expect Jemele Hill to remain fearless moving forward because one thing Jemele Hill after that all took place — I think a lot of folks missed this — is that she very pointedly apologized to ESPN for breaking their, I would argue, very ill-defined social media policies. But she did not apologize to Donald Trump or his administration.
TAVIS SMILEY: I watched so many of these games on Sunday as well. Like you, I watched these pregame shows. I wanted to see how people were going to behave, what they were going to say or not say. So I saw all these owners on the sidelines with their teams in cities all across the country. And yet I could not get out of my — you know where I'm going. I see the smile on your face already. You know where I'm going with this.
I could not get out of my head, Dave, while I celebrated that these owners were standing with their players and rebuking Donald Trump, while I celebrated what the Commissioner Goodell had to say to the president's divisive remarks, I couldn't get out of my head this is the same NFL that took too long and still isn't as serious as they ought to be about what these injuries do to the brains of their players long-term.
This is the same NFL that won't change the name of certain teams that are offensive to Native Americans. This is the same NFL that doesn't have enough Black coaches and enough Black executives. The same NFL — I could go on and on and on.
DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah.
TAVIS SMILEY: So in this moment, I celebrate what these owners and what the league did, but I wonder whether or not they're getting over on the cheat. That is to say, all of these other issues still go unaddressed and pushing back on the president when he's coming after your money is an easy thing to do. I don't find that to be courageous, quite frankly.
DAVE ZIRIN: Oh, I agree with you entirely, and that's one thing we have to be really clear with the audience about too is that I think these NFL owners were out there linking arms with players not because they stand with Colin Kaepernick. If they did, Colin Kaepernick would have a job.
TAVIS SMILEY: Exactly.
DAVE ZIRIN: And not because they stand with people like Michael Bennett or Malcolm Jenkins. So I do consider them and others to be absolute community heroes. I mean, they're doing it because Donald Trump did not stop at going after those athletes because Donald Trump's sense of masculinity is so fragile and so toxic that he also went after the NFL for being "too soft" on this question of traumatic brain injury.
I want to remind people that Donald Trump did not play football, the same way he dodged the draft and goes after people like John McCain in saying, "Real heroes don't get captured" and the incredibly derisive remarks he's had for our men and women in the military over this time.
I mean, this is what we have to remember about Donald Trump is that he lives out his manhood vicariously, whether it's through football or whether it's through his alleged numerous sexual assaults on women. This is how he proves his manhood. He proves it in the boardroom. He proves it by tearing down low income housing. This is how he proves it.
And in this particular case, though, he went after people who not only have larger checkbooks than he does, people who he depends on, but he also went after a group of owners who, even though they supported him in the election because they want lower tax cuts, let's remember these same owners met in a room and said, "We don't want Donald Trump to buy the Buffalo Bills", which he tried to do three years ago.
They said this guy is too tacky, too cheap and too sketchy to invite into our Billionaire Boys Club. So Donald Trump still has a bone to pick with them and they clearly are not afraid to stand up to him either. But they're doing it less for social justice and more because they're minding the store.
I mean, let's remember too that this question of head injuries, when you talk about NFL owners, yes, I think some of them are concerned about the players, the people they see who come back after they're retired and look incapacitated. I'm not saying that they're unfeeling about their players.
But let's also remember that this question of head injuries, of CTE, of traumatic brain injury, it also represents a profound existential threat to the future of the National Football League and whether or not there will be a National Football League in the decades to come or what it will even look like in 20 or 30 years.
So for Trump to go after them and saying that they're being too careful about these issue and too soft about these issues, they had to stand up for themselves, so that's they did. But it also creates something very awkward.
You mentioned offensive team names. I mean, to see Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington football team, linking arms with his players on Sunday Night Football, I mean, I kept thinking to myself, what's the headline gonna be? Redskin's owner against racism [laugh]? I mean, it's absurd. Charles Dickens wouldn't dare write that, it's so absurd.
But, you know, sometimes, especially these days, politics creates strange bedfellows. In this case, Donald Trump did what I don't think we've seen in the NFL in decades and that's unite the NFL community as a whole because there was a singular attack going at them from the outside.
TAVIS SMILEY: So I guess the question, Dave, is whether or not it is possible to both hold — put another way, this to my mind is not an either/or proposition. It's both/and. So the question is, can you hold Donald Trump and the NFL accountable at the same time or do we only have the capacity to do one of those at a time?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah, I mean, isn't that the toughest thing in politics? To walk and chew gum at the same time? And what makes Donald Trump so tricky in so many ways is that, you know, he and his right wing echo chamber, they co–opt issues that people like myself have been working on for years.
Like today on Fox News, they were saying, hey, the NFL better be respectful to the president because the NFL gets billions of dollars in government money and the government should turn that off. I'm sitting there hearing about this like I've been working on this issue for years about ending corporate welfare for the National Football League, and guess what?
This is the first time in history Fox News has ever taken a stance against corporate welfare and they're doing it in the most opportunistic way possible. So it is very difficult because the instinct is to say united front with the NFL.
But then, wait a minute. You know, I'm somebody who's called for Roger Goodell to be fired. I'm somebody who's actually tried to turn off that government money with my writing and tried to influence that to change the name of the Washington football team, to go after these owners.
So, yeah, I think what's needed so desperately right now is for the NFL Players Association led by DeMaurice Smith to have an independent perspective on what ails the league and have that perspective be something that actually goes after the owners in terms of when you think about issues like healthcare, guaranteed contracts, etc., but then also goes after Donald Trump and his efforts to demonize people like Colin Kaepernick and Black athletic dissenters. I think the NFLPA is uniquely positioned to give us a lead about how to do this.
You know, joining with the owners when it's necessary to fight off these kinds of right wing attacks, but also going after the owners when it's necessary as well. But as far as doing it from the outside, yes. It's one of those things where it's like it's trying to find a black cat in a dark room while you're blindfolded.
TAVIS SMILEY: Let me ask two questions, Dave, that have to do with another piece, another slice, of what Donald Trump has tweeted more than once over the last few days. One, he's made a mockery of the NFL in his tweets for their ratings being so low, number one.
And it wasn't just that he attacked the NFL, as you know. He called for a boycott of the NFL. He gave instructions to folk through his Twitter account for what they could do, what they ought to do, to force the NFL to change, etc., etc., etc.
So this boycott, can you imagine any condition or circumstance under which there would be a nationwide boycott of the NFL, number one, and the president has his own thoughts about this. But what is really behind, to your mind, the decreasing, the low ratings, of the NFL as compared to previous seasons?
DAVE ZIRIN: Yeah. Let's take it once each step. That's a terrific level of questions there and it's deep answers. he first thing about Donald Trump, he's already backtracked on the boycott call. When he was actually pressed by reporters and he wasn't, you know, sitting in his bathroom with his iPhone tweeting things out, he said, "No, no, no. People shouldn't boycott. People should do whatever they want."
I think that's a sign about how much he overstepped on this question. He did not expect the ownership fraternity to come out as one against him. He overstepped. He did not expect white players like Alex Smith, quarterback of the Chiefs, to say things like "Why does this president get angrier at us than he does Neo–Nazis?"
You know, he didn't expect things like that, so he was quickly on the defensive in saying, "No, no, no. No boycott." And then he also put out a statement like saying this is not about race. You know, so concerned that he was, that he was looking like just an absolute stone cold racist in Huntsville, Alabama with what he was saying.
He said, "This is not about race. This is about respecting the anthem." I swear to you, if Donald Trump was the sort of individual who you could sit down and talk with — and he's not — what I would say to him is, "It's not for you to say that the protests are or are not about race. It's the people who are protesting who get to say what these protests are about."
And what these protests have been about from the beginning is that they have been part of a long continuum in the African American community that Dr. King highlighted as well of taking a knee as a form of protest. It's a form of prayer and contemplation and resistance and it was very particular and very distinct and that's why Colin Kaepernick did it.
That's why other people did it, and the point was to raise awareness about the gap between what the flag represents and the actual lived experiences of Black Americans in this country. That's what it is. It's not about the Army, it's not about the flag. Anybody who says so is trying to dodge the discussion.
Now to get to the question about ratings, this is the part that's also to me so absurd. Do you know baseball ratings are at a historic low right now? And until last weekend, they never had one protesting player.
The basketball ratings are low relative to 20 years ago, even though they've remained somewhat stable. Hockey ratings. I mean, on some channels, a test pattern gets a higher rating than hockey.
I mean, the fact of the matter is is that sports ratings are down across the board. This is statistical fact. You can't blame everything on Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennett. The reason why these ratings are down, it's not that complicated. It has everything to do with how young people spend their spare time.
It's just different. The median age for people who watch sports on television, depending on the sport, ranges between 36 and 56. The low end being NFL, the high end being Major League Baseball. There is not a young audience to watch sports, so sports are frantically trying to figure out right now how do we improve things like streaming services on phones.
Because people just aren't sitting down in front of the boob tube anymore in the evening and sitting down for three hours and watching commercials and watching a game. It's like that's changing in the American cultural fabric.
I mean, I'll tell you something. My nine-year-old son who's obsessed with sports, he and his friends, they take their phones and they make their own videos of them playing sports and they post it to YouTube [laugh].
They would rather do that than watch sports, you know. That's just the way it is. That's what they do. I didn't tell them to do that. I don't even understand. I don't even know how to do what they are doing technologically, and my son is nine. It's different people.
So to put it on Kaepernick, absurd. The last thing you said about the boycott — and this is really interesting too. Because who called for a boycott before Donald Trump? It was the NAACP.
And it was from the perspective of racial justice, talking about all the issues that you raised, Tavis, from minority hiring, to the treatment of Colin Kaepernick, to CTE, and the hiding of information that the NFL has done and how that's disproportionately affected Black players. That's come from the NAACP.
And to me, this reminds me of when Donald Trump — do you remember when he first started talking on and on about fake news? He did that after all of these fake news stories came out from the right wing echo chamber about like pizza restaurants that were secretly Hillary Clinton child pornography rings.
That's when he started talking about fake news, so I just find it fascinating that he's talking about boycott literally weeks after the NAACP called for their own boycott, almost as if the boycott's successful, he could claim credit for it.
TAVIS SMILEY: He went after Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors and I'm still unclear whether or not there was ever an official invitation anyway, but notwithstanding whether there was or not, he dis-invited Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors from the White House.
Of course, they put their own statement out. They weren't coming anyway. LeBron James got involved. Called the president a bum on Twitter. So the whole NBA got involved as well. What did you make of his dis-invitation of the Golden State Warriors to the White House?
DAVE ZIRIN: Well, you know, the Golden State Warriors, it's so interesting because they had the moral high ground because even though so many of the Golden State Warriors like Steph Curry, like Kevin Durant, had said that they were not going to this White House.
Steve Kerr, who had been very critical of Donald Trump — that's their coach — he said that he wanted to meet as a team because he thought it would be good for the country if they went and then could have an honest exchange of ideas with Donald Trump. And it says so much about Donald Trump that he pulled that away so quickly.
You know, I was thinking just the other day, Tavis, about that moment and I know you remember it so clearly because of the amazing work you did in New Orleans and around Hurricane Katrina. But that moment where Kanye West said George Bush doesn't care about Black people.
Whether you agree or disagree with Kanye West, do you remember the reaction of the Bush administration, how appalled they were that someone would say that about them, how hurt they were that someone would say that about them?
Donald Trump, I think, if Kanye West said that, he wouldn't say he was hurt. He would just call for Kanye West's record label to drop him [laugh]. I mean, almost as if to say "You're damn right I don't care about Black people!" It's much more the Donald Trump approach.
So here's Steve Kerr saying, "Yeah, maybe we should meet" and Donald Trump's like, "No. Get out of here. We don't want you." He is so fragile, his masculinity is so fragile that he has to tweet out right away, "Hey, the Pittsburgh Penguins are coming to the White House."
And he has to tweet out right away, "NASCAR does it right. They're gonna fire people who don't stand for the anthem", of course, not saying a word about the embrace of the insurrectionary Confederate flat at NASCAR events. So this is who Donald Trump is. This is what we're reckoning with and I think we're all aware of it by now, as if this weekend didn't prove it.
TAVIS SMILEY: It'd be laughable, Dave, if it weren't so serious. But I'm glad to have you on to talk about serious things. Dave Zirin, sports writer for the Nation magazine. Dave, good to have you on. Thank you, my friend.
DAVE ZIRIN: Thank you.
TAVIS SMILEY: That's our show for tonight. Thanks for watching. From Los Angeles, goodnight and, as always, keep the faith.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Zirin
http://www.davezirin.com
https://www.thenation.com/article/taking-a-knee-is-not-about-abstract-unity-but-racial-justice
https://www.thenation.com/article/for-the-nfl-it-was-choose-your-side-sunday
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-fragile-toxic-masculinity-of-donald-trump
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Kaepernick