Nike Nixes ‘Betsy Ross Flag’ Sneaker After Colin Kaepernick Intervenes

[GKMotley]

“Even Revolutionaries Like Chocolate Chip Cookies”

Perhaps 50 year old folk wisdom resonates over the blue.

 

[GKMotley]

Ya’ gotcha choice. We’re capitalists over here.

Try the bacon and jalapeno chocolate chip. Live a little.

Milk chocolate for me, though my wife has introduced me to 85+ % cacao.

 

[GKMotley]

If my wife finds 93%, I can expect to being trying it.

 

[Trader]

Betsy Ross was a very ordinary person who did an ordinary thing under extraordinary circumstances. She was a seamstress who happened to sew the first 13 star, 13 stripe flag of the American Revolution. She is the kind of hero Americans typically love even if they do not become famous.

Another example would be Rosa Parks, a black woman who was just too tired after work to give up her bus seat to a white man, as the local law required. It became a major moment in the civil rights movement.

Still another was a man you will have to do a lot of research to find. I think his last name was Cohen. He was a combat engineer who stood in the middle of the road and yelled “Halt!” and then ran like hell. For a moment the first vehicle in a German tank column stopped and his two buddies used a bazooka to blow the tread off the lead tank in the opening hours of the Battle of the Bulge. Because the German attack was in such a hurry to reach its objectives, they were moving without their own engineers. It took them eight valuable hours to unblock the narrow road. Cohen and his buddies reported back to their headquarters and other teams of engineers were able to beat the Germans to several river crossings and blow up multiple bridges. The attack was a major failure and the last German offensive of WWII.

Besty Ross and these others were Forrest Gump before the movie was made.

 

[Theo520]

Still another was a man you will have to do a lot of research to find. I think his last name was Cohen. He was a combat engineer who stood in the middle of the road and yelled “Halt!”

This story is just after 28 min

 

[GKMotley]

Thank you. Now I can go to the books.

 

[Trader]

This story is just after 28 min

Thank you. I am really impressed with how fast you found this, and with the story itself.

My father was with the 23rd Engineers, 3rd Armored Division, First Army. At this time they were on the northern flank of the battle. They were supposed to be resting because of the heavy losses in leading the breakout from Normandy. The 3rd Armored had almost 11,000 killed and wounded in less than 11 months. For a 15,000 man division that is a lot. Even their division commander, Major General Maurice Rose was killed in action. By the time Peiper’s men got close to the First Army they were out of fuel because of the people in the video.

 

[PJH_74]

the violation of Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 8 of the US Code entitled “Respect for the Flag” where I quote…

You beat me to it. I’m bemused and a bit annoyed that, by my observation, those most fired up at Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the Anthem and subsequently “disrespecting” our county and flag are the same ones likely buying more of these offending products and usage. Organizations like the Veteran’s associations, the Scouts, the Military, etc. are the only ones who really get it right.

People who supported BLM and the right to kneel may see denigrating our founding flag, a flag made by an abolitionist as just too much pandering.

A few things:

First, the idea of kneeling was suggested by a white former Green Beret instead of sitting it out like he had been. His rational was that by doing so he would be participating as a sort of middle ground.

LA Times Article

Second, what the flag and other national symbols mean to your experience is sometimes not even close to what others have had. For black people that experience involved years of slavery and non-citizenship. For black veterans of WWI and WWII it meant fighting and dying for our country as any other solder while at the same time OPENLY considered inferior to white solders and given undesirable assignments and lack of promotional opportunity to match. Veterans of Korea and Vietnam saw the remnants of such treatment. These soldiers also fought for and returned to a country that legally allowed direct discrimination to them even though the Constitution they fought for guaranteed them equality. For Native Americans there’s a similar history of attempts to force them to give up their own culture and have white values and patriotism imposed on them. All while having their lands “legally” stolen.

I think Nate Boyer, the one who suggested kneeling, put it best:

I’m not judging you for standing up for what you believe in,” Boyer wrote. “It’s your inalienable right. What you are doing takes a lot of courage, and I’d be lying if I said I knew what it was like to walk around in your shoes. I’ve never had to deal with prejudice because of the color of my skin, and for me to say I can relate to what you’ve gone through is as ignorant as someone who’s never been in a combat zone telling me they understand what it’s like to go to war.

It is not wrong, nor un-American, to have differing views of what your citizenship, opinion of the history of this country, and your relationship with its symbols mean. Forcing uniform conduct during national tributes does not reflect this. I wonder how many so offended by actions like kneeling have actually given up an afternoon from getting drunk on Memorial Day to attend one of the solemn and formal tributes to the fallen of this country. The ones where they present colors, read off names, and play Taps. I can’t say I’ve done this with great frequency, but standing up for a minute while a song is played is cheap tribute compared.

 

[GKMotley]

Note: RE: Title 4, Chapter 1, Section 8 of the US Code entitled “Respect for the Flag”.

As I noted in post 66 above, that is Miss Manners for the Colors. Originally conceived as a method of preventing well meaning/ignorant faux pas/undignified examples of flag display. Unequal to protecting Old Glory from eccentric displays of…umm…speech. Sic transit gloria, etc. It is informative/educational, not prescriptive. Still, it will tell you how to position the flag, so you don’t look ignorant of customs. If that is the desire. And even the military, where I spent 20 educational years, was as likely as not to have napkins with American flags somewhere on them, at Fourth of July picnics. Or on things like cakes. Retirement cakes, e.g. The gods have a sense of proportion. OTOH, they knew how to display the Flag.

18 U.S. Code § 700, OTOH, was intended to be prescriptive. And punitive, to the violators. For roughly 30 years, since a Supreme Court ruling redefined freedom of speech in this area, it has been null and void. Unenforceable. Sic transit gloria mundi.

 

[PJH_74]

For roughly 30 years, since a Supreme Court ruling redefined freedom of speech in this area, it has been null and void

I don’t think these standards should ever have been enforced legally, they were certainly a reaction to flag burnings and the like. But they set a standard, maybe too much of one, but running around with a very tattered flag on your car for example doesn’t speak well of flag respect.

It might be that I see a lot of faux righteous anger over what is really McPatriotism. Defining patriotism as standing for a song, or repeating a pledge; which in a sense is carry over Cold War propaganda that just ended up being integrated in to our culture. For how many are these rituals not just some form thing marking the start of a game or school day?

For me the best patriots are not simply people willing die say as with a soldier. It’s the people that work incessantly to change the wrongs of our culture who flirt with severe backlash that knowingly could end in their death. MLK is an obvious one, but his legacy and people’s opinion of him during his life time have been whitewashed, sanitized, and sanctified because of his murder and more palatable challenges to the status quo than other contemporaries, some of whom are still reviled by our dominant, somewhat delusional cultural self image.

In many ways by creating St. MLK, our society has tried to pardon ourselves for segregation and the like. It also allows it to write off those who point very accurately to where things have yet to change.
Jax Unfortunately in the last few years it has become glaringly obvious that many people don’t even need St. MLK to justify them writing off a message they don’t like. You can see it on display in this thread. A not so perfect man with a valid but sort of ham fisted criticism of our society gets mocked for his playing ability, supposed lack of patriotism, wealth, made a political football, and effectively blacklisted from his profession. Why? Because it’s soo much easier deflect self-reflection through, not just shooting the messenger, but filleting and frying him too.

I’m by no means saying Colin’s points are always air tight or academic. But what he says and does comes from the lived experience of a black man in this country. He did not come from money and has only become famous and successful by rigorously and diligently honing what is probably a relatively rare talent. He has likely worked harder than 99% of the people in this country to be where he has gotten to so far in life.

 

[GKMotley]

running around with a very tattered flag on your car for example doesn’t speak well of flag respect.

Agreed. So I put a flag decal on my car, back in the day.