We Had To Choose Between Trump And The Philadelphia Eagles. We Chose The Eagles.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Eagles have shown that the only way to lose a fight with Trump is by caring about his trash talk in the first place.
The only place to start this story is with Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce — standing at the podium on top of the famous Philadelphia Museum of Art steps, dressed in a gaudy green and purple Mummers outfit — leading a couple million Philadelphians in this song :
No one likes us
No one likes us
No one likes us, we don’t care
We’re from Philly, fucking Philly
No one likes us, we don’t care
His speech was, I say without hyperbole, the greatest thing that has happened in the history of Philadelphia. Not just because the Eagles were celebrating a Super Bowl victory over one of the most hated sports franchises in the country, but because it perfectly captured the essence of the city. Sports fans are deeply susceptible to the fantasy that the team they love somehow connects with their core values, even though most players are just professionals passing through town and doing a job. And yet I insist: This version of the Eagles is the most Philly team of my lifetime. This is worth noting right now because the president is picking a fight with them, and he’s losing.
Does it matter if Donald Trump is mad at the Eagles for not showing up to his flag celebration? It does not matter. Sarah Huckabee Sanders bemoaning the Eagles “playing politics” is just noise (as if an official visit to the White House is ever apolitical), and the Eagles understand this. By refusing to show up to the White House and watch the president mumble his way through “God Bless America” like a kid who hasn't prepped for the school pageant, they have embarrassed him and made enemies of lots of people who were never going to listen to or like them in the first place. The Eagles are unique, so far, in understanding how stupid all of this is. Angry tweets and passive-aggressive press releases cannot hurt them. Trump prevails in his public fights when his adversaries overestimate one or more of the following: his intelligence, his attention span, and/or his power to harm them.
The administration is brazenly corrupt and has enacted a number of policies that are legitimately dangerous to a lot of people, but players like Malcolm Jenkins and Chris Long — both well-respected veterans with secure roster spots — are beyond its reach. Nothing real is at stake unless they allow it to be at stake. They have reached the pinnacle of their profession and are more popular in Philadelphia than sweatpants. The only way they can lose is by engaging in an endless bad-faith debate with Trump on an issue he does not actually care about.
Some fans were frustrated with the team’s statement about the White House “disinvitation” because it didn’t directly address the White House’s claims, but I argue that the best choice they made was not acknowledging Trump at all. He and his biggest fans are obsessive about being the alpha and establishing dominance. In this dispute, the Eagles — who obviously are not intimidated by his bluster — are choosing not to engage with him. The cliché is that defense wins championships, but that only works if everyone is playing the same game. While Trump preens and shouts, the Eagles act as if they can’t hear him, because they have more important things to worry about.
Jenkins is redirecting the attention to his admirable political causes. Long understands that by donating his entire salary to education initiatives, he has the moral high ground without having to explain himself. Nick Foles and Carson Wentz — both devout Christians who fit the profile of a Trump voter exactly — have been conspicuously silent, but still supportive of their teammates. The roster includes a number of players who may very well have voted for Trump, or have families who support him, but the president has also been fighting against them and their livelihoods for a year. He calls them sons of bitches and he fantasizes about the days when it was easier for them to get brain injuries. He pressures the league to fine and even cut players he doesn’t personally like. Some of these players might be in his constituency but they know very well that he’s not their friend.
One of the cardinal sins for a football player is to be “a distraction.” That’s what got Colin Kaepernick blackballed from the league. To be a distraction is to be a detriment to focus and winning. “Distraction” is a catchall term that includes criticizing the quarterback, being arrested for domestic violence, protesting police brutality, and being openly gay. And yet, the Eagles won the Super Bowl, despite having all these socially conscious players. It was another reminder that “distraction” is a cowardly excuse most teams use to silence their players.
One reason this franchise is more tolerant of so-called distraction is that it’s used to it. The corps of beat writers covering the Philadelphia Eagles is massive, persistent, and ill-tempered. Former coach Chip Kelly used to complain that there were too many reporters covering the team and wondered why they couldn’t get by with only one or two instead of the roughly 30 who followed him every day. When the Eagles were scouting prospects for the 2016 draft, they subjected potential picks to mock press conferences to simulate the frenzy of the Philly spotlight. Philly Voice writer Jimmy Kempski spent more than a year badgering general manager Howie Roseman for details on the trade of an inconsequential player named Allen Barbre (he finally got them), though nobody else in the football world cared. The White House Correspondents’ Association could learn a few things from this group’s doggedness and attention to detail. So, who cares if a few extra national reporters show up to practice looking for quotes? Who’s afraid of another guy with a microphone asking tough questions? They’re used to it. That’s what they’ve been doing all along.
Based on the NFL’s embarrassing kowtowing to Trump on the national anthem issue, most of the league’s owners have no idea how to deal with the problem of the angry president, but Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie is uniquely suited to weathering this storm. With his Hollywood background, his doctoral dissertation on the role of women in film, his penchant for eco-friendly initiatives, and his extensive support of local charities, he is one of the most liberal owners in pro sports (though it’s worth noting here that he is much more a polite “let’s all get along” liberal than he is a rabble-rouser). More important, he has owned the team since 1994, and so he understands that a) the Eagles are more important to this city than everything else, and b) it is impossible for someone to be meaner to him than the fans will be.
It’s important to note here that Malcolm Jenkins is clearly smarter than the president. This isn’t a high bar to cross. But it’s worth emphasizing. It’s possible that Donald Trump has read at least one full book in his lifetime, although he may have read that book only because it was about himself. Sometimes you can accidentally absorb new information even when you’re just skimming for the mentions of yourself — anything is possible.
Even still, I don’t mean to say it’s easy for someone like Jenkins. He deals with a lot of nonsense on social media. He's going to be hated by a certain percentage of the population. He gets racist threats every day. But he has a cause that goes well beyond himself. The president is incapable of identifying anything in the world outside his own being.
This is about the 1,000th most important bad thing about the Trump presidency, but it feels good to see someone refuse to bow down to him. It feels even better to know the Eagles are outsmarting him at his own game. He needs the back-and-forth to sustain the outrage, but while he’s throwing a tantrum in the West Wing, the Eagles are going about their business, determined not to engage with him while still fighting for good. They know eventually he will move on to pick a new fight, with someone less media-savvy, someone easier to bully, and they will just keep winning football games and working to improve their communities.
You could write Kelce’s victory speech off as simply drunken revelry with no deeper meaning, but based on all the Eagles’ other actions, it’s clear the group truly believes it. In their encounter with Trump, they are saying very explicitly: You don’t like us? Fuck you — we don’t care.
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The President has already announced that he will not receive the winner of the NBA tite, regardless of which team it is.
Petulant child...
Did he have to?
Obviously not.
He has made it a habit to trash White House traditions.
Obama is no longer President. The current President is a fellow named Donald Trump.
The seed concerns the current President. Please post about him rather than about a man who is no longer present on the national scene.
Thank you.
Removed for context
Indeed - he didn't have the White House Ramadan celebration last year but after pressure gave it this year.
Trump White House under fire for lack of Muslim-American representation at Ramadan celebration
The White House hosted its first Iftar dinner after declining to hold it last year.
Wednesday night, to commemorate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Trump White House hosted its first Iftar dinner — the meal that ends the daily fast.
The White House has hosted an Iftar dinner annually since the Clinton administration. However, President Donald Trump — breaking with tradition — passed on hosting one in 2017, causing controversy. This year, however, the Iftar dinner was no less controversial.
No Muslim-American leaders or activists appear to have attended the dinner. (Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, declined to provide a final guest list), and it is not clear if any were asked. The dinner was instead attended by a number of Middle Eastern diplomats and senior officials, including representatives from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, as well as one American Muslim military chaplain. According to the Guardian,representatives of a number of prominent domestic Islamic advocacy organizations, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), were surprised not to be invited to the dinner.
“There has been no real engagement, no real effort to even invite members of our faith communities, to have conversations with the White House or administration,” Hoda Hawa, MPAC’s director of policy and advocacy, told the Guardian.
Trump’s Iftar dinner may have been well-intentioned, but it seems to be representative of a wider trend in his presidency: that of minimizing attention paid to the needs and goals of Muslim Americans, while stoking Islamophobia more generally to appeal to Trump’s white, conservative base. From the “Muslim ban” barring visitors from seemingly arbitrarily selected Muslim countries to his repeated, hostile, and often factually incorrect comments about Islam (like the debunked idea that American Muslims were “celebrating” 9/11), Trump has positioned himself in opposition to the American Muslim community.
His remarks about Islam at the event, however, were generally positive. He called Islam “one of the world’s great religions” and wished attendees a “Ramadan Mubarak” — Arabic for a “blessed holiday.”
However, a number of American Muslims saw in the start of Ramadan the opportunity to publicly oppose the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric on Muslims. The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) sponsored Not Trump’s Iftar, an interfaith rally outside the White House, in partnership with other Islamic advocacy organizations. Wardah Khalid, a Media Associate with Church World Service — a humanitarian organization that worked with CAIR on the event — spoke to Vox about the community’s general feelings about the Trump administration: “For any Muslim leader to even consider going to that White House is hard,” she said.
Attendance needn’t equal full endorsement of a White House’s policy decisions she said — she attended President Obama’s White House Iftar, despite having problems with his foreign policy, but she could not imagine attending Trump’s Iftar. A lot, she said, would have to change before she would even consider attending in 2019. “The way that President Trump has made it his complete mission to marginalize Muslim Americans, to say that ‘Islam hates us,’ to ban them from entering this country, all of these things would need to be reversed and we’d need a huge apology,” she said.
“But,” she concluded, “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
The comment was a worthless deflection of the petulant child now occupying the white house. It was also homophobic.
Is it any more petulant than NBA players saying neither team would go to the WH--when they haven't even been invited?
That you do not see the dissymmetry is not surprising.
That you refused to answer the question is what is not surprising.
You worship Donald Rump and Ivanka?
OSM,
I for one, don't want to see the C word here used. I am sure you can find another word from your lexicon to call her. Please note, this is request is made as a member
(Skirting the CoC removed) Telo
Seems being called a dude only offends you depending on the source, no surprise.
Say what???
I sure am glad you restored flagging for me. It makes such a difference...
Did someone pull your chain?
You wouldn't be strong enough for me to notice.
Deleted skirting {SP}
I don't bleat.
Sounded JUST like it.
No one here has done that. I would have flagged it immediately (not that I've noticed any utility in flagging...)
I personally have NEVER done that. (However little respect I have for Donald Trump as a person, he is still the President, and that office must be respected.)
Holy shit, man!!
Are you really going to pollute my future seeds because you hold a stupid fifty-year-old bitterness against an actress?
Deleted, Skirting {SP}
Perhaps it is easier to spell than Dictator and authoritarian which is an accurate description of trump of which he is proud.
Not on my seeds, please.
Would you prefer Putin's cock holster?
I'm surprised you would use such language to describe Trump.
OSM,
I asked you as a member and not a moderator, since public figures can be called anything. The C word should never come from anyone that is a gentleman, in my books.
So it's OK to use the N word for all Black public personalities?
Are you really going there?
OK guys knock it off. I already made the mistake of commenting on this article as a member and as of late there has been confusion about when a mod can moderate ( meta to follow), but this thread will be reported and moderated as soon as another mod is on.
First there is no correlation.
Secondly, how does doing what you pretend to abhor make sense and elevate your position or the discussion?
More bothsidesism??
I flagged that C post the moment it went up, and I asked for the foul language to cease. I'm still waiting.
And you're saying "guys" plural?
Yeeeeeeesh!
So I suppose you were defending Obama as the bigots marched with signs of him with a Hitler mustache and a swastika arm band? No?
"The Eagles have shown that the only way to lose a fight with Trump is by caring about his trash talk in the first place."
I really have to laugh about that statement.....hysterically.
Think about it.
When you earn disregard it is yours to keep.
It's a Philly thing ?
Now how about that statement in the article ?
No one likes us
No one likes us
No one likes us, we don’t care
We’re from Philly, fucking Philly
No one likes us, we don’t care
Speaks volumes huh ?
in third grade I imagine it was a keeper.
Bazillion Dollar FB Players are a bit lacking in anything else besides football for sure......huh
Nuclear Physics was not on their schedule.
Ya think ?
Who is we? I didn't choose the Philadelphia Eagles From what I understand it, in the last minute, only one player was going to show up. The MSM would have made a bunch of crap up either way, so Trump did the best thing, cancel it, nip it in the bud. And then move on to things that really mattered to the American Citizens, instead of fooling around with the Left's constant bickering over every little thing to carry on their agenda.
First of all this whole kneeling is based on a false premise in the first place. Blacks representing 13% of the population commit over 50% of the homicides in this country. Whites represent 77% of the population. That's over 5 times, almost 6 times as many whites as blacks in this country. They make their own bed.
More whites are shot by police than blacks, but I understand their are almost 6 times as many whites as blacks, but the crime rate in the black neighborhoods are horrendous and the poor law abiding citizens who are unfortunately stuck there in most cases have to deal with it every day of their lives. The left never mentions anything about them, only the blacks that are being killed by the police.
Use your head and think about it. The police have to deal with 5 times as many whites as they do blacks before they have to deal with a homicide, or to put it in another way, the police are 5 times more likely to run into a homicide by blacks than they are when dealing with whites.
To really put this into perspective, consider how many homicides blacks would be committing if the demographics were reversed and everything else remained the same. They already commit a little over 50% of the homicides in this country and if all of a sudden there were 5 times as many blacks as there were whites, what do you think it would look like? They would no longer be committing a little over 50% of the homicides, they'd be committing nearly 80% of the homicides and the whites would be committing around 10%.
All these figures do make a difference. Consider for every 5 steps you take you encounter a rattlesnake or for every 25 to 30 steps you take you encounter a rattlesnake. You'd be in a bad place either way, but that's the way it is with comparing black homicide vs white homicide and you're 5 to 6 times more likely to encounter a homicide and it might be you when encountering a black involved in a crime or maybe not a crime, but a situation you have been conditioned to question what you are about to be encountering as a police officer when dealing with blacks. And the fact is police are less likely to shoot a black. Wouldn't you.
I was strong armed robbed earlier this year by two young black men. If I had a gun at the time, you would probably be seeing riots on your TV happening in Charlotte, but no one rioted about me getting beat up and robbed and I doubt they would have if I had been killed either.
When it comes to homicides and robbery, blacks with their 13% population kill and rob more people than whites do with their 77% of the population. And when stopped or confronted by a police officer, according to many of the videos the Left always seem to have, these people don't act any way the way most of us do. They seem to refuse to follow instructions and make it more likely to be a victim.
So no, I don't support the kneeling for a flawed premise. I could care less whether they kneel or not. Of course I do respect the flag, but I can't make anyone else respect the flag. With the MSM's political agenda being that of promoting division instead of trying to be a force for the good of all people, it's hard to make these people understand, they are being duped by the Left and the MSM who do not have good motives that could make a difference in all of our lives for the better.
You're justifying the killing of unarmed people.
Yeah, no surprise.
You'd do the same...
Bed time. Half past midnight.
Locking.
It's now almost 7 AM.
Good morning.
Unlocked.