President Donald Trump thinks he’s the king of anti-political correctness. He’s said people are “so worried about being politically correct that they are unable to function.” But once again he’s selling his own brand of the divisive malady by opposing the rights of others to express their opinions.
“You have to stand proudly for the national anthem,” Trump told told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade immediately after the NFL issued its new rule prohibiting players from taking a knee during the anthem. If they don’t, he added “they shouldn’t be playing” and perhaps “they shouldn’t be in the country.”
In other words, the form of protesting racial injustice started by quarterback Colin Kaepernick almost two years ago is politically unacceptable to him.
He’s also implied it’s disrespectful to America’s soldiers. But not all veterans agree. The tweet of a World War II veteran supporting the players right to protest went viral last fall. And dozens more began tweeting with the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick.
My oldest son is a veteran. We haven’t discussed this controversy. But while he was deployed in Iraq, I told him I had begun publicly protesting the war. At the time, members of the Bush administration argued that antiwar protesters were supporting the enemy. “If I’m fighting for our freedom” he said in response to my revelation, “why would I deny you yours.”
If we’re not universally offending our combat troops by opposing the country’s leaders during wartime, then it’s ridiculous to claim taking a knee during the national anthem is unpatriotic. That’s simply Trumpian PC.
The argument that politics should be kept out of sporting events is empty too. It doesn’t square well with politically motivated boycotts of other entertainment. Like the one conservatives have aimed at Netflix after the network signed a contract with Barack Obama to produce programming. Or the one started this week following the cancelation of Roseanne Barr’s show due to her tweet that the parents of former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett were the “Muslim brotherhood &planet of the apes.”
She’s not the first comedian who lost a job over jokes that offended liberals.
But it was conservative Catholics who were outraged by Kathy Griffin’s reference to Jesus when she accepted a 2007 Emmy award. Then a year ago she lost her spot on CNN’s live New Year’s Eve broadcast, which she’d been doing for eight years, because of a photo she posted of her holding a mock-up of Trump’s decapitated head.
It happens to serious people too. In 2013, news host Martin Bashir was pushed off the air by MSNBC for calling Sarah Palin “America’s resident dunce” and a “world-class idiot.”
And of course, there’s late-night news satirists like Stephen Colbert. Some liberals fumed about a joke he made last year that they considered homophobic. And conservatives wanted him fired for saying Trump talks like “a sign-language gorilla who got hit in the head” in the very same monologue.
Real Time host Bill Maher has also compared Trump to gorillas. Some conservatives are arguing it’s so similar to Barr’s bad joke that HBO should fire him.
But it’s the controversy Maher contributed to a week after the 911 terrorist attacks that’s the most informative on this subject. On his show aptly titled “Politically Incorrect” Maher called America cowardly for “lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.” He was agreeing with his guest, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who said the terrorists were warriors, not cowards as President Bush had called them.
Maher later apologized. But rather than call it an ill-advised, spontaneous attempt at humor, he explained it was intended “for politicians who, fearing public reaction, have not allowed our military” to do their job.
D’Souza’s politically incorrect statement wasn’t a joke either. What it should have been was an invitation to think deeper about the way other people view America’s role in the world.
And that’s where this story begins. “If we have these real conversations that are uncomfortable for a lot of people” Kaepernick explained soon after the nation reacted to his protest, we might reach “a better understanding of where both sides are coming from.”
That’ll never happen if political correctness is a censorship tool for the left and right. If it does, America might soon become a country united in name only.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. He contributes a weekly “My Turn” to the Juneau Empire. My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire.
