Oh, say can you see the point of the Anthem protest?

October 8, 2017

A new development in the continuing saga that is the Trumping of some NFL players taking a knee during the National Anthem to protest police brutality against people of color: Vice President Mike Pence left the Indianapolis Colts-San Francisco 49ers game after several Niners – former teammates of protest initiator and onetime quarterback Colin Kaepernick – took a knee during the Anthem.

"I asked @VP Pence to leave stadium if any players kneeled, disrespecting our country. I am proud of him and @SecondLady Karen," Trump wrote on Twitter.

"I left today's Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem," Pence wrote on Twitter.

But he and @POTUS must’ve known that there would be kneeling players, particularly on the Niners – who, along with the rest of California, are to the resistance of @POTUS what Boston was to the American Revolution. ...

The Kaepernick Knee keeps trumping the Donald

September 26, 2017

Nancy Pelosi, the House of Representatives Minority Leader and sometime new BFF (along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) of President Donald J. Trump told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd Sunday that she would like to see the president as more of a unifier.

Well, Nancy, you have gotten your wish. Seems like the NFL is united – against the president.

Of course, that’s not the way El Presidente saw it. Here’s what he tweeted after players took a knee during the National Anthem in protest ...

A double life: Sex, Aaron Hernandez and the limits of culture

April 24, 2017

Now it all makes sense – the drug-taking, the trigger macho culture and, perhaps most important, the revelation of bisexuality.

Suicide, as I wrote about the hanging death of former New England Patriots’ tight end Aaron Hernandez, always begs the question, Why? But those of us who believe passionately in reason – that there is an answer for everything, no matter how unknowable it may seem at the moment – knew there had to be more to the murder of Odin Lloyd, and Hernandez’s life in prison sentence for it, than the company they kept and any perceived disrespect within their gang culture. ...

Dead ‘innocent’

April 19, 2017

In “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press, May 10) – the second novel in my series “The Games Men Play” – quarterback Quinn Novak wonders which is more depressing: prison or a hospital.

I think on this day you would have to say prison ...

As the Easter egg rolls: A bromantic breakup

April 18, 2017

Easter eggs are not all that have been breaking lately. Hearts have been broken, too, as the bromance of the century ends.

Donald J. Trumpet and Vladdie “Rootin’ Tootin’” Putin called it quits after a relationship that lasted less time than that of Aaron Rodgers and Olivia Munn but certainly longer than Britney Spears’ first marriage.

“There is a low level of trust between our countries,” Secretary of State “Sexy Rexy” Tillerson, the John Forsythe of our 1980s nighttime soap opera, noted somberly after meeting with the Russians. ...

Champions (of a cause)

February 20, 2017

“Should professional athletes be allowed to use their status to talk about things more important than the games they play?”

That is the question that Jay Caspian Kang asks in his most recent “On Sports” column for The New York Times Magazine.

It’s a rich, juicy question, because it goes to the heart of our ambivalence toward outspoken athletes, artists, entertainers and other public figures who are not public servants. ...

Too big to fail: Trump, Brady and Federer

February 6, 2017

The parade of successful egotists continues – President Donald J. Trump, all-time men’s Slam winner (and recent Australian Open champ) Roger Federer and, now, record five-time Super Bowl champ and record four-time Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady. He led the New England Patriots to a come-from-behind, overtime victory over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI, 34-28.

These three hardly need more accolades to fan the flames of pride. And while Fed may be more elegant and Brady more circumspect about it, they both have a manner about them that says with Trump, “I’m a winner, and you’re not.” ...