RUSH: Oh, some clown, some sports columnist at Yahoo — I don’t remember his name. I just glanced at the story. Ready for this? Marshawn Lynch, who now plays with the Las Vegas Raiders, although they’re not in Las Vegas yet, they’re still in Oakland. But Marshawn Lynch sat on the bench during the national anthem during a preseason game over the weekend. And so the media, panting breathlessly, want to speak to him after the game. And he said (paraphrasing), “Hey, nothing to it here, man. I’m just being me. Just doing what I always do, been doing it for 11 years.”
The media, “Eleven years? We’ve never seen you sitting on the bench during the anthem for 11 years. What are you talking about?”
“Yep, that’s me, man, just doing what I do. Don’t read anything into it. Just doing what I do.”
The sports media is very proud of Marshawn Lynch. And they’ve gone back and they’ve tried to look through game tape to try to find if, in fact, he did sit down during the national anthem for 11 years. They can’t find any evidence to support the claim. But it’s Marshawn Lynch and you don’t call him a liar to his face. They went to the coach of the Cleveland Browns, Hue Jackson, said, “Hey, Hue, what do you think about all these players here, the Kaepernicks of the world?”
Hue Jackson’s African-American, he said (paraphrasing), “I don’t want to see it here, man. I talked to our team. I don’t want to see it. We play the anthem. We stand for the anthem. That’s what we’ve always done. That’s what we continue to do. I hope it doesn’t happen. I hope there’s nobody on this team that’s gonna take a knee, stay seated on the bench.”
So a Yahoo columnist, Yahoo Sports columnist whose name when I saw it I didn’t recognize, which is why I don’t remember it, has a solution, and it’s right along the lines of the solution in Iceland to Down syndrome. This guy’s brilliant idea, if you want to fix the problem, stop playing the anthem. He says they don’t play the anthem at concerts. They don’t play the anthem before Broadway plays. Why do they do it before sports events? Just eliminate it. And if you don’t have the anthem, then nobody can get in trouble for sitting down, ’cause there won’t be anything being played while people are seated.
And there you have the intellectual clarity of the left. Eliminate the patriotic, eliminate the symbolism that is meant to inspire people and connect them with the history and the greatness of their country. Eliminate it. That’s the problem, of course, let’s just get rid of the anthem. Why didn’t anybody else think of this? And then our players couldn’t get in trouble.
Hey, Mr. Yahoo Sports columnist, let me tell you how the real world works. If this ever happened — and don’t discount it, because this guy’s idea is gonna be picked up throughout sports media. And I guarantee you by the end of tomorrow, this will be a topic on Fox News, a panel discussion, maybe many of them, and it’ll be on CNN, and it’ll be all over the place.
“Is the solution to this problem eliminating the anthem? Can we eliminate this disrespect or this controversy by simply taking what’s controversial out of the equation?” And therefore we have set up for us that the controversy here is not the players who are ignoring it or disrespecting it; it’s the anthem itself which is the controversy, you see.
Yes, my friends, it is America itself which is controversial. America has such a sordid past. It is not worth it to honor America. We shouldn’t do this. It gives people the wrong idea. This is not a great country. It never has been great, and it shouldn’t be great, ever. And so getting rid of the anthem will get rid of the controversy. Always the left’s solution. And we’ll see if I’m right. How long’s it gonna take for this to become a mainstream discussion?
And then they’re gonna start going to owners, then they’ll go to players, “What do you think about just getting rid of the anthem?” Let me tell all of you what’s gonna happen. If that ever did happen — and I wouldn’t be surprised if it did, because, as you know, corporations don’t like controversy. And if the anthem is causing controversy, causing distractions, if all these players begin to take a knee, sit on the bench, that’s a distraction we don’t need here at the NFL. Let’s just get rid of the anthem. That won’t stop anything.
The people who are gaining attention and fame by disrespecting or opposing the anthem will find something else to cause the cameras to focus on them. And they already know what the basic ingredients are. Go out there and diss the country, and the media will love you. Go out there and proclaim that you have serious problems with the United States, and the media will be immediately sympathetic. So they would just find some other way of, quote, unquote, protesting.