Quote:
Originally Posted by Fish
He's a dumb athlete using his only platform. But let's not act like he hasn't tried to explain his intentions repeatedly. He's said over and over that his beef is with the government and police, and not the military. The quote above is one of many defining his criticisms. The problem is that people are completely ignoring that.
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The problems are two-fold on CK's part.
The first level is his initial act was overly broad and directly at a subject of passion. For better or worse his statement was 'everything about the flag and anthem you revere [whatever that may be individually]. . . .Yeah, **** that. I'ma sit over here and purposefully decline.'
It's kind of a 'mess with the bull, get the horns' situation.
Imagine if one had a beef with some aspect of labor practices tangentially associated with the Walt Disney Corporation. So you got to the front gate of Disney World opening day, with hordes of tourists and families and groups of schoolkids all on their big vacation day and started shouting '**** Mickey Mouse!!'
Now, after they tackle you and arrest you in front of God and everyone you start clarifying your complaints.
You're still the '**** Mickey' guy for all who witnessed.
This gets to the secondary problem, which we haven't even addressed yet, because, at least in my case, we're waiting for CK to say something concrete.
His message, even when clarified, is still muddled. It's limited to government and police. But it's still a generalized complaint of oppression. It is troubling that he appears to be comingling matters of varying reasonability and outrage under one umbrella. He lists Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and others as 'murdered by the government.' Strong terms, objectively inapplicable in many instances and subjectively questionable in others. Sullying the legitimate criticisms in the process.
And people applaud him for 'starting a conversation.' Perhaps it's a blind spot of myself personally, who overestimates the attention span of the populace, but I ask 'which conversation specifically?' And 'if the conversation hasn't already started months or years ago, what have we been talking about all this time?'