In what its parent company’s CEO is calling a “protest to a protest,” ESPN affiliate radio station 101.1 FM (WFAY) is turning its back on broadcasting East Carolina University’s football game Saturday against South Florida after members of the ECU marching band took a knee during the national anthem last weekend to protest oppression of black people, Mediaite reports. “Roughly a dozen band members disgraced themselves on the football field this past weekend,” Jeff Andrulonis, head of parent company Colonial Media, said in a statement shared by a local sports anchor. “They’re college students and it’s about time they get an education on the concept that their actions have consequences.”
This is so stupid in many ways, first and foremost because the band doesn’t listen to the game on the radio as THEY ARE ON THE FIELD for the game. The only people who you are punishing are your listeners, who didn’t do anything won way or another. Second, your breaching your contract, and I bet there are some lawyers out there who are going to teach these idiots that “actions have consequences.”
fastEddie
They’re upset because they kneeled for the anthem on the RADIO. Which nobody could HEAR. It is amazing that right-wing fee-fee’s are so sensitive. They don’t like to think about cops killing unarmed Black men and what that says about our society. These are the same idiots that believe that there was no racism until Obama.
Hal
Your children are so clean. Would you like to be my maid?
Major Major Major Major
I guess we should expect no better from the sort of people who get upset about lapel pins that don’t have the correct magical sigils on them.
mayyouliveininterestingtimes
There’s mention of ‘their’ but not ‘ours’. Hmmm. Responsibility for thee but none for me. Weeeeeeee it’s so much fun being an adult!
Steeplejack (phone)
“Colonial Media.” Perfect.
scav
Horrors! The beating heart of every college students’ self-esteem is their actions being described on the several-rounds-back media outlet of radio!
RareSanity
“I think I’ll stick my finger in the eye of one of the largest media companies on the planet. There’s no possible way that it could come back to bite me in the ass, in my role as CEO of a smaller media company.”
You’re a real tactician there Jeff.
? Martin
@fastEddie: Conservatives feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of white voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. They fear something terrible has happened.
eric
@RareSanity: ah, but then it will be “they are censoring my political expression by making me carry the game.”
amorphous
@fastEddie: No racism until Obama? I don’t understand. The Supreme Court told me racism was cured and we didn’t need a voting rights act any more. So racism existed for like 6 years total?
eric
@amorphous: @amorphous: you are forgetting the back panthers, so add a couple for the 60’s black militants,
Punchy
Uh, well, you’re breaching good spelling rules, that’s for sure.
Can U gitz a spel czech?
Roger Moore
@amorphous:
And if there’s no more racism, then how can
ni**ersblacks be the real racists?Mai.naem.mobile
I just bet the band gives a shit about not playing on the radio, because ,you know when I tune into the radio for a sports broadcast I am doing it to listen to the band. El Dumbo.
scav
I think the band should explicitly organize a twitter-broadcast of the game. Commentary and photos (I rather assume this already happens, but make it explicit). Twitteradio.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Oh, when they say racism is over, they mean non-antiwhite racism. Blacks being the real racists has been on the rise for, oh, about seven years, eight months, and 15 days.
Kryptik
This part strikes me as the most absolute tonedeaf part of it. Like, the protests you’re seeing? They’re protesting the very fact that some actions don’t have consequences at all, or at the very least, the consequences are for victim only, not for the offender.
Bubblegum Tate
Ah, yes, ECU. Just outside of the town it’s in, there’s a lovely old building called the “Coon Hunting Club.” You’ll be shocked to learn that it isn’t about raccoons.
Dork
I’m certain all 27 ECU fans planning on listening while prepping for (cleaning up from?) a hurricane are going to be just devastated.
LAO
My favorite line from the “article:”
So, it’s not the fact that these kids staged a protest that’s the problem, but rather it’s that the kids did so in a manner that drew attention to their protest. OK — what a load of crap.
MJS
Not broadcasting the East Carolina game on the radio, leaving literally dozens of listeners in the lurch.
quakerinabasement
Well, if they don’t cover the game, then listeners won’t be forced to witness the protest…on…the radio?
RaflW
OT, but I’m having a really strange argument with Snopes. Last night someone replied to one of my tweets saying that the Clinton Fdn isn’t rated by one of the top charity rating sites. I managed to get the person (who I though was a troll, but maybe isn’t) to tell me they got that from Snopes, so I went and looked.
Indeed, they have an article up about Kaine’s claim about the Clinton Foundation’s A+ rating with Charity Watch. Snopes cites that the much larger, better known Charity Navigator “refuses to rate the Clinton Foundation.”
Except Charity Navigator reversed it’s refusal nine months ago, and now give a 4 Star (top) rating. I emailed Snopes and they are digging in, refusing to edit the piece.
Is Snopes backed by wingers? I don’t actually use them much, but they have a rep in the public, I think, of being an arbiter. But they’re sucking badly on this.
JPL
Donald Trump is tearing the NFL apart
Mike E
Our local NC 99FM “The Fan” covered this and hit it just right, a call in guest was trying to ‘take away’ their scholarships for their demonstration (“protest” seems a bit loaded, said the show hosts) and was asked repeatedly how this harmed him or anybody else…essentially, they pointed out several times that freedom of expression is what makes us great especially when you don’t personally care for the message. Good on them.
ETA this radio station is an ESPN affiliate
Major Major Major Major
@RaflW: Snopes as far as I know is just some married couple. I don’t believe they’re wingers, but they’re hardly worth being the authority they’ve become.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: Can’t be too careful. The Ministry of Magic is infested with mudbloods, you know.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@JPL: It’s like Kay says, everything that Trump touches ends up with shit on it.
JDM
@fastEddie: you forget, these are incredibly sensitive people. Hearing people kneeling on radio is the least of their abilities.
hueyplong
Wow. Some guy in NC is acting like a dick. Must be Wednesday.
JDM
@RaflW: I suspect Snopes is a victim of working the refs by the rightwing.
RaflW
Conservatives feel a great disturbance in white supremacy. They sure as heck can sense that their grip on power is slipping. And they are ill equipped to figure out how to deal with it, since all the tools they understand are also saturated in whiteness, and so will increasingly fail to work.
It is frightening but fascinating. I hope the forces of decency, reform, equity and love prevail.
Face
@JPL: Least surprising blurb in that entire piece:
Colossal dickhead, professional bully, rather openly racist Shitstain Extraordinaire Incognito is a Trump fan. Just another reason to pray for his ACL to tear into 47 pieces.
pacem appellant
@LAO: I was in The Band in college. We were up before dawn for most games to prep for the game. It was one of the most exhausting, but fun, parts of my life I guarantee you, the marching band gets up before the players, regardless of the quality of the team they’re rooting for. Not only was the band up early that day, but they practiced their asses off to sound awesome and look awesome, win or lose. So go to hell, or at least, go back to bed and leave this to the professionals.
tarragon
@Major Major Major Major:
David and Barbara Mikkelson initially, still married but she’s retired from the site. David still runs it and has employees as writers.
Haydnseek
@JPL:I was really excited when I saw your post, but the article was a real letdown. I only clicked on it because I thought he was averaging 8.3 yards per carry or something.
MCA1
Same ol’ same ol’ here, really. Even without the pretty obvious Trumpian middle class white guy resentment and aggression in this radio guy’s rant, it’s mostly a flavor of “I just want to be entertained, stop forcing me to acknowledge real world problems while I’m trying to be a passive spectator.” Which of course is just a dodge – what they’re really saying is simply “Stop forcing me to acknowledge real world problems that don’t direct affect me personally. Ever. But since there’s a football game going on, I’ll hide behind the ‘don’t talk to me while I’m eating’ thing.”
Even so, I could be more sympathetic to “C’mon, not during the game” if it weren’t for the fact that 98% of the population just moves from one form of passive spectating to another, filling up all of their non-work time, and can never be bothered to actually think about anything of substance like social justice issues. We’re so lazy we not only want to watch 6 – 10 hours of football every weekend, but then we want to listen to no college degree meatheads talk about it for the ensuing 4 days. Here we are now; entertain us.
/elitist snob rant
JPL
@Haydnseek: The article is not surprising, since teachers are having to handle situations, where the white kids taunt the Latinos.
.
Trumps little fingers are too small to handle a football
sukabi
@Hal: pretty sure those kids know more about the first amendment than those asses, as is proven by the protest and the radio station counter… folks in the booth need to spend some tiMe getting an education. Dumb asses.
Gravenstone
@Face: Yeah, that snippet was met with my utter lack of surprise.
hovercraft
Isn’t this cutting your nose off to spite your face ? It hurts the team but also the broadcaster?
Haydnseek
@JPL: Apparently my attempt at levity failed. I just thought your link looked like a headline in the sports section, so I went for the cheap laugh. Don’t worry. It will probably happen again.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
They’re not wingers, but they’ve always had a touch of CDS, unfortunately.
Major Major Major Major
@pacem appellant: I was in a marching band not known for its musical acumen or ability to march and even we got up before the players.
Patricia Kayden
@fastEddie:
You mean they don’t give a damn about cops killing unarmed Black men and what it says about this country. We are lucky that all Black people are doing is taking a knee or otherwise not engaging in fake patriotism when they have no reason to be patriotic.
JPL
@Haydnseek: Nothing wrong with cheap laughs. I added mine on the comment, about the Don’s little fingers. Okay, maybe that’s not a laugh, since it’s true.
Matt McIrvin
@Major Major Major Major: Wingers constantly accuse them of being liberally biased. I met one of them briefly back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, though I don’t know them well. But my experience is that when they get into political stuff they’re almost painfully centrist. But they’ve got some other writers working for them now for whom that may not be the case.
Haydnseek
@JPL: Ah! But the key to a lot of humor is its basis in truth……and yeah, I laughed at the little fingers line.
Major Major Major Major
OT: Why is my Balloon-Juice browser tab eating up almost as many system resources as the four web servers I’m running? What the hell is on this site?
Anoniminous
Strange factoid: some cellos in the 16th and 17th centuries had an extended end pin or harness so they could be played as the orchestra precessed into a church or cathedral.
And since I cannot listen to the East Bumphuck North Cracker State football game this weekend my life is over. Might as well hang myself.
pacem appellant
@Major Major Major Major: The Stanfurd marching band? Ha, I kid. They were our rival band. Not only do they get up before dawn to rally behind the Cardinal, they start drinking before dawn, too, and still play pretty good. It’s hard to march and play well while drunk though, hence their famous “Park and Blow” formations.
MCA1
@Mike E: That’s good to hear. There’s some pretty classic cognitive dissonance going on here behind the scenes, too. A lot of these folks who support the station manager wouldn’t recognize the irony in agreeing with someone saying there are consequences to demonstrations like this (which I wouldn’t disagree with as a concept – it’s just the ridiculous tender fee fees and all out of proportion lashing out that’s offensive), and then screaming about “censorship” and impingements to their freedumb of speech when a media outlet pulls the plug on a show because the host said something stupid and dangerous about 2nd Amendment remedies if Clinton wins the presidency, or somesuch.
LAO
@pacem appellant:
Not sure what you mean and whether this comment was directed at me, but I highlighted the comment because I though it was a pathetic bullshit excuse from the CEO of the media company — not because I believed it to be remotely plausible.
Patricia Kayden
@MCA1: I read something yesterday asking what would happen if Black players simply stopped playing in protest of police shootings. Not sure what that would accomplish but it’s an interesting idea. I don’t see why Black players should be entertaining clueless White people in lieu of taking a tough stance on the way this country allows its police officers to treat its Black citizens. Feels like we need an old fashioned Civil Rights Movement like the one in the 1950’s/60s.
Chyron HR
@pacem appellant:
Oh, man, I loved your cover of that Joan Baez song!
MCA1
@Major Major Major Major: No shit. It takes forever to load the last several days, and I can’t type more than a 5 character comment without having to wait for 10 seconds at least once while the site freezes up.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: Drumpf destroyed the USFL, he’s set his sights higher.
And Rex Ryan is beneath contempt for polluting his work space with politics.
Aleta
Some of the outraged have demeaned the President and the FL for years. They’re quiet about politicians and teachers and police who circulate Nazi Germany-type cartoons about POC, the President and the FL. Where’s the outcry about disrespect for the country? They’ve made the flag into a symbol of religion, which is fundamentalist-type idolatry in service to racism.
pacem appellant
@LAO: Not directed at you at all! My sincerest apologies that it appears so. It was directed at that nimrod who has no idea how much hard work and dedication even a mediocre band puts into a halftime show. They couldn’t protest in the morning because they were no doubt practicing while Mr. WhiteMalePrivilege was hitting snooze on his alarm.
Anoniminous
Sam Wang tells it like it is:
Which is another reason GOTV – especially the 35 and under age cohort – is so important. We need to turn polled supporters into voters.
Major Major Major Major
@pacem appellant: I was there for the alcohol probation years so it was actually pretty chill. This coincided with a four-year streak of the football team being utter garbage, so I mostly did basketball and rallies, which was great!
You guys were fun. Did you ever make it to Davis?
(I’m assuming you were from our rival across the water, not our mortal enemy down south.)
LAO
@pacem appellant: Damn — I was looking for a fight. lol. Next time!
Gindy51
One of my right wing leaning pals was bitching about one of her high school friends whose kid was having another kid out of wedlock (and maybe going on welfare etc). I told her when they run up a $915 million dollar tax write off to call me, until then I don’t want to hear it.
Mike E
@Patricia Kayden: @MCA1: the show hosts kept making asides during Angry White Guy’s rant saying, “Most of the kneeling band members still performed the anthem…you know this, right?”
We are coming to the beginning of the end of an overwrought temper tantrum on the right which won’t end soon enough, or cleanly, I’m afraid
The Moar You Know
@JPL: Wife’s high school is about 25% Latino (we’ve managed to gentrify most Latinos out of the district). Newly founded “Patriot Club” shows up at the game with a giant “Trump/Pence” banner. Kids go crazy, start screaming “build the wall”. Principal doesn’t dare stop them, he’d be fired by the local board. There is no “teachers handling those situations” in a conservative district, even though most of them would like to do more than “handle it”, but their jobs are on the line, union or no. The Latino kids have to sit there and take it and nobody is going to stop it from happening.
In our district, this awful shit is 100% on the heads of the school board. And it’s not even majority Republican-controlled! But it will be after November. My wife is terrified. So am I. We did the signs and have been doing daily GOTV since August and have been talking to every single person who will sit still for five seconds, but it doesn’t matter, as the GOP has dumped several million into this election (it’s a large, prosperous district with a lot of money to steal) and the Dems have left us hanging out to dry. I kind of don’t blame them, though I’ll be damned if they get any more money from me. You leave us to die, I leave you to die. But I get their point. It would cost a LOT of money to beat the looters and they’ll just be back in two years with even more money and more lunatics running.
I don’t even give two shits who’s running for president this election, because the consequences of our local one are going to be very serious to me and my family.
Matt McIrvin
@Anoniminous: There’s some controversy in his comments as to whether volatility is higher or lower than in 2012 (I suspect it’s really a bit higher, and seems otherwise because of some idiosyncrasies of Sam’s model). But he points out that it doesn’t matter much either way; 2012 was a very stable race too.
MCA1
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t disagree. I do disagree, though, with your previous post, and think that it really is more of a “Don’t make me think hard and/or tell me when to be empathetic and/or force me to confront injustice in society and do anything about it”* than it is “I don’t actually care about innocent people being shot.” I mean, yeah, there’s some of that in the Deplorables category, certainly. But just as with the Civil Rights movement itself, most white folks’ better angels kicked in at a certain point when they were pulled out of their stupor and MADE to see the gross injustices in the world around them. There’s just the age old problem of overcoming the natural, universal, not confined to Anglo-American phenomenon of reacting negatively to being told something instead of coming to a realization of it yourself. That’s what’s behind every utterance of “those condescending, know-it-all liberals” in the history of America.
* “and in a convenient projection of self-loathing at my own unwillingness to be part of the solution to these problems, I will bitch and moan incessantly about how ‘government’ doesn’t do anything to fix things, and thereby absolve myself.”
pacem appellant
@Major Major Major Major: Certainly not that school or band in the sprawling southern third of our state. I have my dignity! I did Davis one year, in the late 90s. I remember sounding horrible (then again, I was in the trumpet section, so that was par for the course). It corresponded to day before my 21st birthday, as it happened, and at 12:01 am I purchased my first beer at bar in Davis. The bartender was a tad incredulous, but I passed the “sign your name like on your DL” test three times. I believe it was a Sierra. Good times. The football team was useless while I was there, so no Bowl games. But we had fun. Some of my fondest memories of the band were in the week before Big Game we’d raid Stanfurd campus with our annoying horn blowing, then head back to the Stanfurd Band Shack and play and drink until dawn with our rivals.
aimai
@? Martin: Yup, this is what I think, too.
I am attending the BU School of Social Worker’s Black Lives Matter walk out tomorrow. People are trying to build a movement and its going to take a lot of little actions, as well as big ones, to get it to be big enough to make a difference. I applaud those college kids for doing what they can, within the compass of their daily lives and group activities, to join in and do their part. If every one of the little communities and organizations that people belonged to would agree to one, simple, act in solidarity with BLM all at the same time we’d have a general strike–and that would be something to see.
JPL
@The Moar You Know: That is so sad, and it appears that even a Trump loss, will not stop the hate that he has unleashed.
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
I hope @hovercraft doesn’t mind my cutting and pasting, but this was at the end of the last thread and it’s too amazing not to bring forward.
I checked. Those are real. I’m gobsmacked.
The Moar You Know
@JPL: You are correct, it will not. But like I said, I don’t even give a shit about the outcome of the presidential election, because my local one is going to have very dramatic and immediate effects on my life – like having to sell the house and leave the town I was born in, and have lived in most of my life – if the cons win it. Looks like they will.
FWIW, Trump is a symptom, not the problem. It would be someone else just as vile and horrible. A minimum of 40% of the people in America are vile, and want to stick it to everyone on their shitlist, consequences be damned. I don’t even know how you deal with that, much less fix it.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s a thankless job, but someone’s got to do it.
Villago Delenda Est
@JPL: No, and what is worse, Drumpf will lose, and these people have been agitated to a degree that has but one precedent in American history.
They’re not going to accept their rightful status as equals with all the minorities. They just can’t. They can’t imagine not being on top, dictating terms.
PaulWartenberg2016
they’re really only doing this because South Florida’s offense is gonna come in and OBLITERATE East Carolina.
Mack Attack, f-ckers.
GO BULLS
aimai
@The Moar You Know: I’m horribly sorry for you–I just couldn’t be sorrier–but against this tide of hatefullness there is really nothing that a presidential candidate or even a national campaign can do. You aren’t being driven out because of failures of the Democratic party–if the voters were where you want them to be the party would be strong. The reality is that an irredeemable and hopelessly large subset of this country are just awful people and this election has just given them a chance to come out and play on the big stage.
waysel
@Chyron HR: Ouch! (Some people actually believe that, unfortunately.)
BlueDWarrior
@The Moar You Know: You harden your political institutions to mitigate the political damage. That’s about it. It’s like trying to stop a natural disaster.
RaflW
@Mnemosyne: Pardon my ignorance, but CDS?
I can’t decide which Urban Dictionary version to interpret.
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
@aimai:
And the election itself is no coincidence. They nominated Trump precisely so that he would do this. We’re watching a stage in a process, and I hope that process leads to the mean-spirited assholes losing enough government power that they can be forced into treating everyone else like human beings.
RaflW
@Face: Richie Incognito, offensive lineman seems like it has got to be a made up character. But apparently he’s real. Life imitating art, but pointlessly.
Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck
@RaflW:
‘Clinton Derangement Syndrome.’ A lot of people just plain hate the Clintons, to the point of irrationality.
Amir Khalid
@RaflW:
In this context, I think she’s referring to Clinton Derangement Syndrome.
Major Major Major Major
@pacem appellant: oh you guys and your damn trumpets during Big Game week! Lol.
I always liked the rallies after the basketball games. I was a big fan of the Humboldt band too, made some friends up there at Davis one year and used to road trip up to Arcata for a long weekend in the spring.
Roger Moore
@MCA1:
How do you really distinguish the two, though? Asking the world not to confront you with truth’s you’d rather evade is just a softer way of saying you don’t care about them.
burnspbesq
there is a dumbass marketing professor at ECU who is running around saying that since the band’s exercise of first amendment rights trumps university policy, her exercise of second amendment rights should trump state law, so she’s going to be packin’ while teachin.’
hovercraft
@Anoniminous:
Wang is echoing what Larry Sabato said yesterday, this race has been very stable for months. Now all we have to do is get out the vote!!
The Moar You Know
@aimai: Agree and disagree. The voters need to be where we want them and where I live, they’ve more or less been priced out and have moved. We’re an old SoCal beach town that used to be nothing but farms, and is now nothing but money and lawyers.
I do fault the Democratic party for not doing something – anywhere – that the GOP does everywhere. And that’s dumping a lot of money into local races. Dems have always been notoriously weak in maintaining a bench of ready and willing players. CA has some, but not enough, whereas the GOP in CA has got thousands of people in their back pocket, ready to run, as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Better local parties = better state parties = national victories. I guess the Dems think, correctly, that they can coast on the aftermath of Wilson’s prop 187 here for at least another decade, but I personally like having a plan B.
There is no plan B in this state.
That’s all I got. Bitter and disappointed in everything.
burnspbesq
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Scottie Montgomery, the new ECU head coach, is a former Steelers assistant, so your woofin’ is likely to earn Cole’s undying enmity. He’s also a former Duke player, so if I weren’t Officially Done with Organized Brain Trauma, you would also be on my list.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck:
Spend any time in the comment section at Booman Tribune and you’ll see this in action.
Felonius Monk
The only one who disgraced himself is Jeff Andrulonis of Colonial Media. Hey Jeff, you, sir, are a fucking idiot and probably worship that Confederate flag, too.
Calouste
@burnspbesq:
Teaching at the Department of Redundancy Department, I assume?
trollhatten
Hillary’s #s continue moving in the good direction. NYT thingie has her at 81/19% vs. Donnie. For reference, her lowest # was 58/42% on June 1 when the graph begins, with ebbs of 69/31% on July 27 and 70/30% on July 28.
Sunday should be interesting. It’s Donny’s final chance to patch the leaking hull.
MCA1
@Roger Moore: Perhaps inartful wording on my part. Patricia Kayden made a distinction between “don’t give a damn about…” and “don’t like to think about…” and that’s what I was responding to. Since those two items were held in contrast to one another in her post, then, I guess I took the former to mean “tacitly approve of,” probably since the object of that “caring about” was the highly charged concept of black people being shot by police officers. It was that which I imprecisely worded as “don’t actually care about.”
In other words, my thesis is that there’s less active, hate-based racism behind all this than there is a softer, need to toggle the Empathy button to the “active” position self-absorbtion. Although I’ve possibly misinterpreted what Patricia Kayden was trying to say in the first place, of course.
hovercraft
@The Moar You Know:
The answer is not to give up. You can only try to change minds one at a time. There are a lot of shitty things that we all have to deal with everyday, you just have to figure out a way to deal with it. I have a 10 year old black boy, every time I hear about another police shooting I think that it could one day be me on TV wailing for my lost child. There is nothing I can to to prevent this from happening, except try to instill in him all the precautions he must take as a black boy. And that may not be enough as we’ve seen on multiple occasions. Having to move and start over again is tough, but if that’s what you have to do to support yourself and your family, then just do it. While it’s sad to have to let go of a home and town that you’ve been in your entire life, you get to take those memories with you. You get to take the most important things with you, your loved ones. Some people don’t have the luxury of moving to a new place where their loved ones will be safe and happy, because it doesn’t exist. The political process is all we have in this country to create a better society. We live in a country where people are free to be as hateful, ignorant and selfish as they want to be, our job is to fight them for control of this country so we can make it better. There are two laces for this fight at the ballot box, or on the streets protesting. Giving up and allowing them to take control of towns, cities, legislatures and states, is letting them win, and if we do that we all lose. As Theodore Parker said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”.
And I’ll throw in Ghandi, ” The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Hang in there, it gets better.
Sorry for the scold
Aleta
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck: I’m so hoping that these headlines added to Kaine’s attacks (+ Pence elevating himself by not defending Tr) will keep Trump in a frenzy until the debate. If he follows his heart* and launches right into defense, he’ll only bring the same issues forth again, in his words. Then H can attack his responses, instead of bringing it up herself, which will save time for her to be positive. Kaine did his part in this strategy.
* Here’s what his heart tells him: “When someone crosses you, my advice is ‘Get Even!’ When people wrong you, go after those people because it is a good feeling and because other people will see you doing it. I love getting even. I go after people, and you know what? People do not play around with me as much as they do with others. They know that if they do, they are in for a big fight.”
In aikido terms, they’re leading him by following his own energy and attempting to take him down with it. (Though baiting him and hoping for a fight and not keeping a pure heart themselves are not.)
Felonius Monk
@LAO:
I’m sure that every listener of that radio broadcast was outraged to actually hear that kneeling. Must be a redneck media empire, this guy is dumber than a Bundy.
Shalimar
Does “ESPN Affiliate” mean anything other than “local station that pays ESPN for content”? Does ESPN have any actual control over what the station says or does?
LAO
@Felonius Monk:
Whoa, the guy is a shmuck but c’mon — the Bundy’s are a super special brand of stupid.
hovercraft
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck:
They were too delicious not to share.
Anoniminous
@Matt McIrvin:
With polling it is a certainty there will be oscillation of results* around a dynamic attractor. The $64,000 question is how “dynamic” the attractor is. I took Prof. Wang to be saying the attractor isn’t all that dynamic.
* which isn’t the same as the MOE
Iowa Old Lady
@hovercraft: In the words of a much better writer than I am, hold tight to your anger. Don’t fall to your fear.
BruceFromOhio
Irony is alive and kicking, taking names and making calls.
Anoniminous
@hovercraft:
Vote Early. Vote Often. Vote for the Democrat of your choice!
Doug R
@LAO: Wake up early is code for CPT.
? Martin
@Pest Bog Mummy, Frakensteinbeck:
Pence was trying to win the debate, Kaine was trying to win the election. Mission accomplished for each.
Felonius Monk
@LAO:
Ammon, according to the account I read, started crying on the stand during his testimony Tuesday. What an actor.
Roger Moore
@MCA1:
It’s not a bright line. At some point not wanting to think about something turns from blissful to willful ignorance, i.e. moves from “don’t want to hear about” to “don’t give a damn about”. The whole point of this kind of protest is to push something out into the open to the point that blissful ignorance is no longer an option- to force people to take sides. Sure, some people will take the other side, but the hope is that there are enough decent people who will take your side that you’ll win.
Gelfling 545
@pacem appellant: And I doubt the national anthem was being played in the morning so it would be rather pointless. To date, no one has been able to explain to me hpw kneeling is less respectful than standing.
trollhatten
Weld takes Aleppoway from Johnson, will instead focus on stopping Trump.
trollhatten
Hlep, hlep, I’m-a in moderation and didn’t say nuttin’ bad. Thx
hovercraft
Trump is taking credit for Mike Pence’s performance last night, the best performance i the history of vice presidential debates. And that is a testament of his judgement. He’s reading off the telepromter, he gets it out but not enthusiastically, and then moved into his Hillary bashing.
trollhattan
Weld takes Aleppoway from Johnson, will instead focus on stopping Trump.
hovercraft
@? Martin:
Exactly, it’s not about winning the media narrative, last night the Clinton campaign was able to create great moments that can be used against the other ticket.
Trump is so far sticking to his script, so the internal numbers must still be bad. He only sticks to the script when he’s afraid of losing.
hovercraft
Now Trump is going to sue Hillary for running a commercial attacking him about veterans.
Whatever happened to the republican disdain for lawsuits?
Roger Moore
@hovercraft:
It never, ever applied to Donald J. Trump.
Felonius Monk
@hovercraft:
That’s Trump’s answer for everything. Sue, Sue, Sue. I believe that is his secret plan to defeat ISIL — he is going to tie them up in so many lawsuits that they will have to give up and go out of business. After all, he’s Donald Trump and he has the best lawyers.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: Indeed. I was there for the ‘polygamy joke during the BYU game’ incident.
hovercraft
People are always telling Trump to just apologize, so why doesn’t Obama apologize for Obamacare, and Hillary must also apologize for Obamacare because she also wants to tinker with it. Some one actually put this shit in the telepromter. He’s sounding rather subdued, now he saying that if he doesn’t win this will have been the biggest waste of time, money and effort. He must win.
EDIT: He finally says something that is true, “this is the hardest I’ve ever worked in my entire life.”
Lyrebird
Thanks for reminding me that I want to send a batch of cookies (uh make that a Panera gift card… checks to see if they have Panera…) to these kids in Louisiana for their dignified protest in a hostile environment. I think also one of the Nebraska teams had players getting death threats? (did someone else see that story?)
hovercraft
Given the tittle of this post, this seems appropriate, Via TPM
J R in WV
Here’s the email I sent the media corp:
Dear Mr Andrulonis:
I am writing to you about your plan to protest a protest that was invisible on your audio-only media system. It seems to me that no protest occurred on any radio broadcast your system made, unless your staff mentioned it.
After 18 band members “took a knee” during a performance of the Star Spangled Banner, you intend to punish fans, students, football players, and the other 232 band members, not to mention the many servicemen in the Eastern Carolina area. This seems way out of proportion. No patriots were harmed during this quiet demonstration.
I’m a white WV Hillbilly veteran, and proudly served with many black sailors during my time in the USN. I think protest is what gave birth to our nation, and that protest helps keep people’s eyes on things that need more work. America is great, but like any complicated great creation, needs maintenance work, just like a Mercedes-Benz runs like a clock, only if you take care of it.
I hope you will reconsider your decision. I have enjoyed the ECU football team when my West Virginia teams – Marshall and WVU – have played them. I have a good friend who taught there as well. The University deserves your respect rather than your commercial protest.
No reply to this is necessary. Thanks for your time.
Sincerely,
The Ancient Randonneur
@Lyrebird:
Yep. Nebraska players told they ‘deserved to be lynched’ for anthem kneel.
Lyrebird
@J R in WV: Wow, nicely done!
Silly follow-up to the kids being all right:
Some of them can do hip-hop pretty well. (This is an H&M ad with children dancing.)
Iowa Old Lady
@hovercraft: Wait. He’s a public figure running for president and he’s going to sue his rival over a political ad? Would an actual attorney try to file that? First amendment, anyone?
Lyrebird
@The Ancient Randonneur: Thank you so much. I’m basically the most stuck-in-the-mud of the people where I teach in some ways, but some sh-t is just wrong, and since I teach kids that age, it hits hard. Makes me want to let them get even more love-mail after the hate-mail.
Miss Bianca
@J R in WV: nice letter! I particularly like the part about “Protest is what gave birth to our nation”. Geez, you’d hope that if anything would make that dumbass stop and think, it might be that point.
catclub
@Gelfling 545:
kneeling makes the white people uncomfortable. SATSQ
The Ancient Randonneur
@Iowa Old Lady: Trump is the Rodeo Clown who thinks if he waves his arms enough the charging bull won’t run him down.
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
His personal and campaign lawyer is Michael Cohen, remember him, Mr “says who?” Do you think this guy wouldn’t go into court with something this stupid? I beg to differ, he sue Bill Maher for his failure to pay Trump $ 5 million for producing his birth certificate proving that his mother hadn’t slept with an orangutan. These two morons would so go there.
The Moar You Know
@J R in WV: Simply wonderful letter. A model of respect and civility. I saved it as an example of “how to write a good, respectful letter”.
You’ll probably get a death threat in return for your pains, because this is 2016 in America, and apparently expressing civility and reason with regard to race relations is no longer acceptable to the right wingers.
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
I look forward to Trump suing Hillary for defeating him in the November election.
Also, he talks about suing more than he actually does it.
Mike Toreno
Bravo to the marching band! I hope the marching band refuses to yield.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mike Toreno: We could all get up to dance.
Villago Delenda Est
@Iowa Old Lady: If we could only have a chance.
Steve in the ATL
@Gelfling 545:
Apologies for interrupting the American Pie lyrical fun, but a lot of religions kneel to pray. So kneeling is arguably more respectful than standing.
At any rate, fuck that guy and every like him.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
So the little dear station manager is upset that these kids didn’t give him the free entertainment he’s entitled to sale at his station. TSK TSK. It’s getting hard to exploit the Others these days with that disrespectful Obama fellow in the Whitehouse.
Mnemosyne
@RaflW:
Clinton Derangement Syndrome. Sadly prevalent even in among liberals.
Patricia Kayden
@J R in WV: Good for you. I’ll do the same. I hope the NAACP is organizing a boycott of Colonial media right about now.
Mnemosyne
@Gelfling 545:
Yeah, that’s been bothering me, too. It’s not like they’re all mooning the flag or standing with their middle fingers extended. They’re kneeling on one knee, which is usually considered *more* respectful.
Yet another sign that what’s bothering people is the subject of the protest, not the way it’s being protested.
Yutsano
@LAO:
Jesus tapdancing Christ…if he knew how early the band kids get up before game day as it was… he’d know how amazingly stupid this sounds.
Origuy
Snopes has been around since the days of USENET group alt.folklore.urban. David and Barbara were active in that group and did a lot of the debunking of the classics like The Mexican Pet and the Neiman-Marcus Cookie Recipe. They’ve achieved their status thanks to careful research and longevity. They definitely aren’t right-wingers. These days they seem to spend a lot of time countering those clickbait sites that claim to be “satire” but generate phony articles that people take as true.
Fun fact: The producers of Mythbusters were active in AFU in the early days of the program and before it first aired.
J R in WV
@The Moar You Know:
We’ve had death threats before, from state cops left on the answering machine recorded for the judge to listen to – so smart! No big anymore.
humboldtblue
@Patricia Kayden: The University of Missouri found out what would happen and the rich white people were not fucking happy. They made the right noises, though, because the prospect of watching 75% of the team walk out and cost the state’s flagship university about $35 million dollars in revenue makes people sit the fuck up and pay attention.
In fact, I think this is an idea that needs to be pushed. These fuck knuckles like Androlunis want an education on market forces and social pressure? Watch what happens when old State U has to cancel a football and basketball season because the actors generating the revenue said “fuck you, we aint playin'”.
Roger Moore
@Lyrebird:
It also seems like a good time to point out how Kaepernick’s gesture has grown far beyond one person making a small personal stand. I’ll admit I was dismissive of him; I never expected it to spread like this. It’s a fine example of the importance of personal action, even if it seems too small to matter; every movement starts with just one or a few people and grows from there.
Lyrebird
@Roger Moore: Yes. Wish I coulda said it that well myself…
Procopius
@Mnemosyne: Sorry to bother you, but when I tried to use acronymfinder to discover what fascinating secret was hidden by “CDS,” it returned 192 possibilities. My limited imagination does not bring up any phrases that might be abbreviated that way. Can you help me out? What is CDS?
Procopius
@burnspbesq:
Well, I hope she shoots herself in the foot, then. She sounds like the kind of responsible gun owner to do that.
Mnemosyne
@Procopius:
Asked and answered. ;-)
Procopius
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Yeah, Clinton Derangement Syndrome is a big feature at Naked Capitalism, too, and I can’t figure out why. There are really smart people there but some of them are absolutely deranged about Clinton, and toss off fever dreams as reality. Clinton scares me, but those people seem to believe in Benghazi, Benghazi, BENGHAZI!!! as being one of her least bad sins. And they’re left of center!
Betsy
@pacem appellant: not that you, or anyone else, actually said this, but — the East Carolina University band is mo/st definitey not mediocre. ECU is one of the better music schools on the East Coast, in fact one of the very best music schools among public colleges.
negative 1
@humboldtblue: Their scholarships get cancelled and the kids get f*#ked. New players take their place, and though the football team may suck for a couple of years the whole thing is forgotten.
The leverage is off. Kids can protest, but no one should expect that they are going to sacrifice themselves for this. Encouraging them to do so is not fair. If anything, if that is the expectation the pressure should be on the pros who theoretically have amassed enough money to be able to weather the consequences.