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OPINION

Give Everyone Their Own National Anthem

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File

I’ve never heard the song “Lift Every Voice And Sing,” at least as far as I know. If I did hear it, it was just on and not billed as the “black national anthem,” that much I do know. I know this because I would have disrespected it by not standing, and I would remember disrespecting it. Not because I’m racist, but explicitly because I’m not racist and abhor racism. Which is why I didn’t voluntarily watch any National Football League games last year, and why I won’t be watching them this year either. 

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Yes, the NFL is a private business and they’re free to commit economic suicide any time and any way they so choose, I couldn’t care less from that standpoint. But the idea that any organization that wants my support, and more to the point my money and time, would embrace the idea that there is such a thing as a “black national anthem” and expect me to be cool with it, shows I’ve probably waited too long to walk away. 

Still, some people simply can’t bring themselves to walk away. I don’t know why football seems to have such appeal to so many. People spend small fortunes on jerseys and any stupid accessory the slap a team’s logo on. Often times, these worthless pieces of unreturned affection are purchased by people who can least afford them. Show me someone with an elaborate NFL team’s logo tattooed on their body and I’ll show you someone I’d bet makes less than the cost of that tattoo per week. 

That dedication and love is not returned; it’s never returned. 

Sure, the NFL loves to wrap itself in the United States flag and pretend to care about the military, but that love is as fake as a stripper’s interest in anything other than your wallet. The league was paid for those gestures, and while they’re allegedly not paid for them any longer, it’s more than a little hallow after knowing they were. 

Now the league that prided itself on integrating years before baseball is embracing the segregation it rejected in the past. They’ll now play the national anthem and the “black national anthem” before each game, as well as badger fans with left-wing political messages of victimhood and division. I don’t think there’s a big audience for pampered athletes lecturing their audience about how awful the country, and by extension they are, while those athletes make more for 3 hours of work on a Sunday than the people watching on TV do in a year. Maybe I’m wrong, but last year’s ratings collapse suggests otherwise. 

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The NFL doesn’t care all that much because a large percentage of their revenue is through corporate sponsorship. If you’re going to rake in hundreds of millions from other companies no matter what, who cares how annoyed the people who watch games get?  The TV contracts are locked in, that money can’t go anywhere. If you have to pander to a left-wing ideology or mob to keep the gravy train rolling, so be it. 

That’s how you get a “black national anthem.” To hell with whether or not it’s the right thing to do, or is being done based on a lie (it is). You don’t do this if you care about the country, you don’t embrace this philosophy. You do this if you're pandering, hoping to appease anti-American grifters like Black Lives Matter. 

So why stop at a “black national anthem”? I don’t think one exists, at least not yet (though you can be sure some left-wing activist group is scrambling to come up with one), but why not a Hispanic national anthem before games too? There are a lot of Hispanic players in the league, why don’t they count? Now there’s an openly gay player, we need a gay national anthem too. There are a lot of tall guys out there, they need an anthem, as do the short people because if tall people are getting one…

The possibilities are as endless as the idea of a black national anthem are endlessly stupid. That, to me, means there’s a possibility that the NFL will adopt it. They have embraced stupidity in every form in which it has been presented to them by the left so far, and progressive Democrats love to segregate, why not give everyone their own national anthem? 

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Hell, leftists are the people who’ve introduced the concept of not keeping score, so why not just skip the game and make the contest one of attrition: which team can stand through the hours of individual national anthems? First one to sit or collapse loses. Of course, if you were to sit or “take a knee” during any of them, other than the actual national anthem, it would be declared some kind of hate crime. In that “hate crime” contest, I’d win it all. Though I suspect it’d be a tie with just about everyone else.

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