A Modest Proposal to Deal with Politics at Sports Events

Despite the obvious effect of their injecting unwanted politics into their football games, most NFL players and their team owners are ignoring their declining audiences and insisting on their "right" to show in public their collective disrespect for the country that has made them wealthy beyond childhood dreams.

I have no problem with their saying or doing anything they wish in private. But when they force a (temporarily) captive audience, who just came to see a game, to witness how dissatisfied these football elite are with some unarticulated aspect of America while everyone else stands for the national anthem, then enough. If they don't respect the anthem, they don't respect the flag, or the country for which both stand. So why subject them to an unwanted performance at the start of each of their games?

Let's see how they would like some politics injected into their livelihood.

The national anthem, whose words by Francis Scott Key were set so long ago to a tune most people cannot sing well (or sing at all), but which is glorious when properly performed, is by now the property of the people of the United States. Congress, acting on their behalf, ought to license its performance at sporting events. The license would be automatic and free of charge to any event put on by teams and players who have no trouble standing during its performance.

But the license should be denied to those who cannot show the minimal respect which every average citizen has no trouble giving: standing silently while it is performed, and then cheering afterward. Each NFL team should be informed that it no longer has the right to perform the anthem at any of its games until its members are ready to grant it the minimum degree of respect which Americans accord to it.

Should any such team go ahead with the anthem's performance, just so they can continue to display their disrespect, then an automatic licensing fee should be imposed without further ado, equal (for the first offense) to $10 per person attending, and accelerating for each subsequent license violation to $100 per person. Indeed -- let the fee keep going up until the price for showing disrespect becomes too high for the team and its owners to pay.

Further, any team that does not have a license to have the anthem performed at its events, but aspires to qualify for such a license eventually, will have to show that it gave a public announcement before the start of each of its unlicensed events to this effect: "The [name of team having the home stadium] announce that they do not yet care to show respect for the national anthem, and so by law are not licensed to perform the anthem at any of their games. Accordingly, there will be no performance of the anthem at this event. Anyone who wishes a refund of the price for their ticket should leave now and collect their money at the box office."

The team should also be prepared to show that it gave a similar notice to every person purchasing a ticket for the event, and promptly refunded the ticket price to any holder who asked for it before the game started.

Finally, Congress should pass a law making the price of any ticket to a licensed sporting event (up to a maximum of 24 such events per year) tax-deductible, but denying any such deduction for tickets to unlicensed events. Later on, if more pressure is needed, Congress could impose a tax, say, of 20% on the price of a ticket to an unlicensed event.

And that is how you play politics with sports events.

Finally! a Politician Speaks the Unvarnished Truth

I have deliberately stayed away from blogging recently -- partly because the news is moving so fast that I have no ability in these days to get above the fray and take a longer view of things, and partly because the Internet is already swamped with too much instant commentary and reaction. Indeed, I dare say that trying to stay on top of today's news as it develops from minute to minute could become hazardous to one's sanity.

The recent Senate hearings on nominee Brett Kavanaugh are a perfect case in point. Was it ever the case that the national networks wasted so much time on such political grandstanding, demagoguery, and posturing -- which had no relevance to the candidate's fitness to occupy a seat on the nation's highest court?  Such politicization of the "advise and consent" role the Senate plays in judicial nominations distorts the real role that Congress ought to play in our government.

I could go on, but there is thankfully a much more direct and forceful way to make my point. Just watch this amazingly candid and absorbing opening statement by Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, delivered mostly ex tempore on September 4.  You will never spend a better eleven minutes listening to such a brilliant dissection of what so ails our current, broken system, and this blog can serve no better current purpose in these hysterical times than to bring it to your sober attention: