Steve Mnuchin, treasury secretary, was on a couple of talk shows yesterday where twice he said that football players should do whatever their team owners wanted; that if they wanted to protest they could do it on their own time. What a swell idea. Then it would be just like the old days, before the Civil War, "Yes, massa." Of course the NFL is tightly unionized so it would be difficult if not impossible for Mnuchin's suggestion to become reality. Players can be fired for embarrassing the league (rarely observed in real time), but the commissioner of the league had already tacitly approved the protests before any of Sunday's games.
Sure, there are plenty of jobs where the boss, or owner can "own" your time and fire you at will, but I don't think sports teams qualify. I would be willing to bet that Robert Kraft can't catch or throw a football. I am pretty sure that Shahid Khan can't punt or center a football. Hard to maintain a good squad if the owner acts like an owner of men rather than the owner of a franchise. Mnuchin, who asked for a government airplane for his honeymoon and did take a government flight to see the eclipse for which he was correctly shamed and accused, also said that Trump's comments were in no way racist. That's also very hard to defend as nearly 80% of the players in the NFL are black so any complaints about their behavior when they are protesting the treatment of their fellow blacks is on the very face of it racist. Besides that, Trump called them "sons of bitches" so he insulted their mothers as well. Many of the men and their mothers called Trump out on that one. Trump wraps himself in the flag while simultaneously disrespecting hundreds of mothers--following through on his previous statements about women.
Nascar owners vowed they would follow Trump and Mnuchin's guidance but Dale Earnhardt, Jr. has more integrity and a better grasp of freedom of speech, tweeting,
"All Americans R granted rights 2 peaceful protests
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable-JFK"
On a different note, I wrote previously about my Maine coon cat being very smart but not yet dangerous as he could not open doors. Last night he learned how to open doors. Not only did he learn how to open doors, but when I tried to prevent him opening the door that allowed him to freely roam by putting a 5 pound weight in front of it, he just moved the weight out of the way and then opened the door. Luckily this is still just an interior door that we close at night to try to keep the cats contained in one area of the house while we sleep. The other bit of luck is that the door locks with a key so we will be doing that very task tonight.
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