The left continues its assault on the NFL.
After letting the anti-American anthem protests fester, the league tried to quell discord by requiring players to stand for the Star-Spangled Banner.
But a gaggle of civil rights groups launched a war against the NFL with one ridiculous statement.
The NFL has suffered a serious decline in viewership over the last two years. Polling data suggests the anti-American protests were a serious reason why.
Commissioner Roger Goodell sat idly by for two full seasons as he saw his brand get tarnished and finally took action.
The new policy that requires players to stand for the anthem or stay in the locker room (or suffer a team fine) was a reasonable resolution to the problem.
However, a cadre of opportunistic civil rights groups are just getting started.
According to USA Today, a protest letter decrying the NFL’s new policy was sent to the paper by a coalition partly comprised of the NAACP, the ACLU, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Immigration Law Center, and the Arab American Institute.
If the connection of these disparate groups seems tenuous, it is.
The only thing these groups have in common is ardent leftism.
Why else would the Immigration Law Center and the Arab American Institute involve themselves in the issue of national anthem protests in the NFL?
The ACLU’s involvement at least makes sense, although the preeminent civil liberties organization is frighteningly teetering on the brink of descent into full-blown leftism.
The group expressed concern about defending the reprehensible white nationalists at the Charlottesville disaster, although the group took the principled yet difficult stance of defending Nazis’ rights to march in Skokie, IL decades ago.
However, a leaked internal memo showed that the ACLU is strongly wavering on the subject of free speech.
The ACLU’s dangerous tilt to the far left along with its alliance with far-left activist groups is disconcerting, and now the organizations have laser-like focus on the NFL.
The joint letter prattled on about how sinister the NFL’s policy is, even though the players are free not to participate in the anthem by staying in the locker room.
However, the players must abide by private-company guidelines if they choose to be on the field.
Just because a U.S. citizen has the right to burn the American flag doesn’t mean he gets to do it at his place of employment and keep his job.
But this isn’t really about application of law. Activist groups’ main focus is the political shakedown.
Ruffle some feathers and rattle some cages, then take home a score.
These groups are banded together in hopes collecting a scalp from the NFL. They want to enforce their diversity initiatives on the league.
The groups essentially admitted as such in their self-serving letter:
“The recent decision to mandate the silence of players wishing to demonstrate for civil rights is even more appalling against the backdrop of the glaring racial disparities in the NFL.”
The groups believe the NFL doesn’t have enough diversity in its ownership ranks, and it’s their job to rectify this “injustice” by applying as much pressure as possible.
If these groups truly cared about the anthem protests itself, they would be going after the NBA, which has a far stricter policy. However, there’s no political hay to be made there, so the NFL remains in the crosshairs.
The coalition also threw in one of their favorite tropes in the shakedown letter. Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said:
“We think that the league’s policy puts them on the wrong side of history.”