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Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Irony can be pretty ironic
Does anyone recognize the tragic irony that the Milwaukee Police Department released this (and got this response from the Milwaukee Bucks) on the same day the NFL announced this.
Posted by Howard Wasserman on May 23, 2018 at 08:45 PM in Constitutional thoughts, Howard Wasserman, Law and Politics, Sports | Permalink
Comments
NFL players are allowed to wear personalized cleats on occasion, including cleats supporting causes like Black Lives Matter. And it seems to happen more frequently than the NBA players wear their protest t-shirts before games (a quick google search only turned up a couple of examples--"I can't breath" & the Clippers turning their shirts inside out in 2014 and Stephon Clark this season, but there could certainly be more), suggesting either the NBA policy isn't really that open or NBA players just aren't as activist as NFL players.
Posted by: jph12 | May 25, 2018 3:05:03 PM
I disagree with the NBA's policy (which, of course, dates to an earlier controversy in the '90s). But the NBA allows its players to wield around-game platforms, as by wearing "I Can't Breathe" t-shirts. So players can express themselves, within their unique platforms, apart from the anthem. Football players are not given a similar space--the anthem is all they have.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | May 24, 2018 7:31:11 AM
What kind of “discipline” is appropriate for torturing someone for no reason? They should have been announcing an indictment but unfortunately the police are exempt from the criminal laws in this country. A cop won’t even be fired unless they kill someone, and even then it’s 50/50 at best.
Why this immunity from consequences isn’t talked about more in law school is a puzzle to me. Instead we pretend that suppression or a 1983 judgment is a meaningful answer when they have zero impact on the bad actors.
Posted by: Brad | May 23, 2018 10:38:57 PM
I will say that your irony is undermined, a little, by the fact that the NFL's new policy is just like the NBA's. The NBA seems to have largely avoided criticism of that policy simply by having it in the first place, instead of adopting it after protests began. It also probably helps that the NBA is seen as the more progressive league, although I'm not sure how it's earned that reputation (maybe by symbolically pulling the All-Star Game out of a state with a transgender bathroom ban, even though the city they pulled the game from actually enacted the LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance that triggered the state law to which the NBA responded); besides their anthem policy, there's the dress code they adopted to crack down on players in "thuggish" apparel.
Posted by: Asher Steinberg | May 23, 2018 9:06:43 PM
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