Coach Tuesday

No sir, not bored. Some of us are legit fed up. After Charlottesville, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Stephen Miller, decades - centuries - of backwards and racist views that continue to take hold in society like a stubborn bloc of cancer cells. We’re done with it. Be part of the solution because times are going to change. It has been explained ad nauseam in this thread and elsewhere that the protests are not about the flag. You can either absorb it or continue deliberately to be ignorant.

You continue to miss the point. At some point, continued ignorance becomes a choice. And a bad one at that.

You mean like the folks who, just a few weeks ago, were literally protesting with assault rifles? EDIT: can you imagine the collective pearl-clutching that would happen if thousands of black males protested outside a statehouse holding assault rifles? The rhetoric that would come out of 1600 Penn?? I can’t believe some of this spin...

As I posted elsewhere, the war on drugs was started in order to expand the federal police state and subjugate minorities. It’s right there in the legislative archives. So many horrible events throughout history have been sparked by an insane narrative about white women being victimized by men of other races - the war on drugs is an example. There are many others. Agree it needs to stop yesterday.

A) HIGHLY political post B) The "whatabouts" are exhausting.

What’s wild is that if you read the legislative histories of many controversial laws, the racist intent is blatant. In law school I went back and looked at the congressional debates and submissions in support of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and it’s all right there in the archives - congressmen pushing the bill as a means to stop “coked up Negroes” from assaulting white women, and in response to Mexicans on speed crossing the border to commit crimes, etc. The drug laws haven’t just had a disparate racial impact - they had a largely racist intent. (Note: it’s also clear from the legislative history that a big push for drug laws came from the pro-law and order crowd, who viewed the new legislation, signed into law by Nixon, as means to expand the authority of the federal police power. Not a surprise, right?)

There is also good and bad within each one of us - don’t make it objective (“good people” and “bad people”). The struggle exists within us all.

This is... wow. Seriously ignorant for one thing. I don’t think most of the protestors come from gated communities. Honestly you’re part of the problem.

Oh please.

It’s interesting, during the lead up to the draft, one major news outlet (can’t recall which) basically was insisting that the “Jake Fromm is a great leader with off-the-charts intangibles” was all agent-driven nonsense. Now there’s more smoke. Let’s see what else emerges - if this is all of it, he probably survives. If there’s even a whiff of more, he’s probably not worth the trouble. Again: his ENTIRE SKILLSET is his intangibles.

But it’s not just cops. You can get shot while jogging. You can get framed while bird watching. There is racism everywhere, even if it wasn’t your reality it’s the reality for many. Again, now is the time to LISTEN, something folks hate doing these days.

I did not. I grew up in a white suburb with peaceful cul-de-sacs and no fear of interacting with the police. I’m fortunate and I realize it, but it’s time for me and others like to me quietly listen to what it was like for people who grew up in a very different America.

Totally. One of my African-American friends invited a few of us to his house tonight for a backyard dinner and so he could talk through some of this - what he experienced growing up and how difficult a conversation he just had to have this week with his ten year-old son - he texted us that he “ruined his innocence telling him what he has to look forward to and watch out for.” Brutal. As his buddies we’re happy to go listen. I encourage others to take this moment to do the same: listen. It’s critical.

Then I'm an idiot - I legit don't understand who is talking and what they're saying.

It's in the locked Brees thread on the main page, easy to find.

Can someone please interpret the millennialese for me?

And that's yet another aspect to it. Legions of people believe (and some have said to to me), in words or substance, since "we" (white people) pay "them" (black athletes) millions of dollars to entertain us, "they" should stand for the anthem. Or alternatively (as expressed by a poster in another one of the Brees threads): "we" (white people) built this society, "they" (black people) didn't and they're just disrespecting and looting it. Folks actually believe that. Let me be clear about it: if you believe those things, you're probably a racist. That's my opinion.

You are painting with too broad a brush. You may well not have a racist intent when arguing “all lives matter,” but there are many in society - and on this board - who are closeted racists, who legitimately believe that black people are predisposed to criminality and that police brutality is a natural and appropriate reaction to “thug culture,” and who hide their true beliefs in the shadows and use “all lives matter” as a Hawaiian shirt, a seemingly unassailable and inoffensive gesture with a deeper, malevolent intent. Seriously, those people exist, there are legions of them, I suspect several posters in this thread even.

That is really well-said. To put it another way: the fact that the message makes you uncomfortable (in its content OR the timing and manner of its expression) makes First Amendment protection for it all the more necessary. (Putting aside, for now, the public/private employer issue which is actually very complicated here.)

To be fair that’s not quite true, one of his teammates literally said Brees should just keep his mouth shut.

“Peaceful protests against police brutality” vs. “disrespecting the flag” has become the new “line in the sand” in the ongoing (and frankly, utterly exhausting) culture war. No one is actually listening to what the other side is saying. There are hypocrites among both sides of the issues: many in the “pro-Flag” contingent are fine looking the other way while other sacred symbols (like the Bible, for example) are co-opted and disrespected by leaders they agree with. On the other side, telling the “pro-Flag” folks not to express their views at all (“Brees should just shut up”) seems incredibly counterproductive and at odds with freedom of expression. And then there’s the lurking racism motivating SOME of the “pro-Flag” contingency, which is intentionally frustrating in that it’s hidden - it’s like the Hawaiian shirt thing, it’s a subtle and seemingly inoffensive expression that is intended to signal to like-minded folks that they’re on the same team. Again, it’s all incredibly exhausting, and the internet has made it worse - no one ever changes their mind or truly listens. I just want to watch football.

Drew Brees was estranged from his late mother, who was a sitting judge - I believe he got a restraining order against her. Not really germane to what’s being discussed here other than I always found that story fascinating and left me thinking he was a more complicated individual than his public persona reflected. He also always struck me as having his eye on a Senatorial bid someday so his remarks should be viewed through that lens as well.

Yes, agree completely. And when you shut down an avenue of peaceful protesting such as kneeling for several seconds in support of a cause, you indirectly funnel the outrage elsewhere, folks feel more powerless and less heard, and protesting takes on a more chaotic, destructive form.

We’re squarely within the “some guy said something” phase of the offseason...

Two words: Mark Ingram.