Like many of CNN’s town halls, Wednesday night’s NFL special featured multiple perspectives and balanced questioning, but the goodwill and dialogue was degraded by liberal filmmaker Spike Lee’s intolerant outbursts.
Chief among them was Lee’s insistence that politics cannot be avoided in sports (and thus must be mixed) because of the country’s racist history and “genocide of Native Americans and slavery” plus dismissing concerns about NFL protests raised by a Gold Star family.
AC360 host Anderson Cooper started the hour-long event by interviewing Philadelphia Eagles safety and activist Malcolm Jenkins before going to his panelists. Rev. Michel Faulkner came down on the side of opposing the kneelers:
FAULKNER: At that moment when the flag is raised, it should be saluted. That's my — you know — listen, I'm a Baptist minister. When somebody's praying at the pulpit, you can't walk in. There's certain rules in the house. You know, in our church, men take off their hats. It's — it’s that kind of thing. Is there a cause for protest? Absolutely. I get it. I agree with so much of what Malcolm is saying and —
COOPER: But that's not the time nor place?
FAULKNER: — but that’s not the time nor place to me. My statement is, you know, when those colors are raised, I'm going to salute. That does not mean that I believe America is perfect, but I believe the ideal of America is worth continuing to work for.
Instead of respectfully disagreeing, Lee leapt to conclusions by accusing Faulkner of calling “these brothers” kneeling for the National Anthem “unpatriotic.”
Faulker made clear that he never said that, so Cooper turned to Lee by pressing him on the point that many believe “this is not the time and place and a lot of fans of the game say, look, I don't want to turn on the game and this is not the right time.”
Lee responded by arguing that politics and sports have to be intertwined because....racist America and stuff:
Politics and sports have always been intertwined, and you can't — we live in the United States of America. Race is a part of the DNA of this country. This country, the foundation of the United States of America was the genocide of Native Americans and slavery. That's the foundation of this country that cannot be disputed and so, that's the foundation. Everything else comes from that.
Showing the town hall’s balance, former Pittsburgh Steeler wide receiver and CNN contributor Hines Ward countered that “it's very hard to juggle” mixing the two “because in our world, the football world, we don't see color...we see teammates come from all different places all over.”
Again, Lee took the conversation and lobbed a proverbial grenade in, seemingly arguing that the NFL is a representation of the slave-master relationship which Ward articulated:
LEE: Can I just say something?
WARD: Go ahead.
LEE: What did it take for Bear Bryant to get a black player in Alabama. They played USC and he said we need to get some niggers. So, how can you sports and — how can you say football is not —
WARD: Well, it’s the politics is — because — you got to look at it. In our world, that's where the league is trying to do, where's the balance.
LEE: But can I just say this, Hines, in all respect. The players are different from management and the owners and they are the people that are running things.
“[T]here's two sides, though. There’s two sides, right? There's one side that's trying to say social injustice and trying to make equality for this, and then there's a side that they look at the flag and whatever that flag represents to you, so be it, but then there's a lot of people that really just want to play football. They don't want to have to pick sides,” Ward replied.
In the next segment, Gold Star father Vincent Bonacasa asked Lee:
Last Sunday, our community had a celebration for gold star parents. It was a very humbling ceremony. But it brought us back to the day we lost our son. It was a very empty feeling. We came home, turned on the TV, and there was the NFL players on their knees. That was a slap in the face to us. So my question is, how do you support these multimillionaires on their knees and don't support what the fallen heroes died for?
Lee stated that he’s “sorry for your loss,” but then hit back that “the narrative that you spoke about is not true” since players “respect the Armed Forces,” the American flag, and the country itself.
Bonacasa and Cooper both stepped in to challenge the liberal activist, who then ripped President Trump for being as crazy as North Korea’s Kim Jong-un:
COOPER: But there's a lot of people who, you know, look at this as disrespectful. When you see the flag —
LEE: A lot of people thought that — what — at the ‘68 Olympics, this is why I’m wearing this shirt. John Carlos and Tom Smith when they won the Olympics, they put the black fist up. A lot of people felt that was —
BONACASA: Excuse me, I have one other question. When North Korea aims a missile at us, are these football players going to be on their knees or are they going to support our veterans?
LEE: Say that again?
BONACASA: When North Korea aims a nuclear missile at us, are these heroes that you say, NFL, that can't support our flag, are they going to be on their knees with this happens or are they going to support our veterans?
LEE: Sir, I'm worried just as much about Donald Trump as that crazy guy in North Korea and he has a nuclear code. I'm worried about that.
One of the most emotional parts of the town hall came later when Cooper turned to “Joey Odoms, who was a combat veteran, former member of the Maryland Army National Guard and, up until yesterday, the singer of the National Anthem for the Baltimore Ravens.”
Cooper added Odoms quit due to the players protesting during the National Anthem and then gave way to Odoms, who told Cooper, Faulkner Lee, Ward, and former NFL player/veteran Nate Boyer:
I felt like not all of me was welcomed. The combat veteran was welcomed, the former 911 operator was welcomed, the person singing National Anthem was welcome, but the veteran who also saw that there was a reason for these players to be kneeling was not welcome. So I made this decision, that that was not the place for me to be.
Here’s the relevant transcript from CNN’s Patriotism, the Players and the President: AC360 Town Hall on September 27:
CNN’s Patriotism, the Players and the President: AC360 Town Hall
September 27, 2017
9:11 p.m. Eastern
REV. MICHEL FAULKNER: At that moment when the flag is raised, it should be saluted. That's my — you know — listen, I'm a Baptist minister. When somebody's praying at the pulpit, you can't walk in. There's certain rules in the house. You know, in our church, men take off their hats. It's — it’s that kind of thing. Is there a cause for protest? Absolutely. I get it. I agree with so much of what Malcolm is saying and —
ANDERSON COOPER: But that's not the time nor place?
FAULKNER: — but that’s not the time nor place to me. My statement is, you know, when those colors are raised, I'm going to salute. That does not mean that I believe America is perfect, but I believe the ideal of America is worth continuing to work for.
COOPER: Spike?
SPIKE LEE: That means you're unpatriotic? I'm asking you a question. Doers that mean that these brothers —
FAULKNER: No.
LEE: That — who are doing, when they’re taking a knee, are you saying their unpatriotic?
FAULKNER: No I didn't say that.
LEE: Okay, well, I’m asking that.
COOPER: But, Spike, but to those who says, look, this is not the time and place and a lot of fans of the game say, look, I don't want to turn on the game and this is not the right time.
LEE: Politics and sports have always been intertwined, and you can't — we live in the United States of America. Race is a part of the DNA of this country. This country, the foundation of the United States of America was the genocide of Native Americans and slavery. That's the foundation of this country that cannot be disputed and so, that's the foundation. Everything else comes from that.
HINES WARD: But I can — politics and sports, it's very hard to juggle that because in our world, the football world, we don't see color. You know, we see teammates come from all different places all over.
LEE: Can I just say something?
WARD: Go ahead.
LEE: What did it take for Bear Bryant to get a black player in Alabama. They played USC and he said we need to get some niggers. So, how can you sports and — how can you say football is not —
WARD: Well, it’s the politics is — because — you got to look at it. In our world, that's where the league is trying to do, where's the balance.
LEE: But can I just say this, Hines, in all respect. The players are different from management and the owners and they are the people that are running things.
WARD: Yes, but then there's two sides, though. There’s two sides, right? There's one side that's trying to say social injustice and trying to make equality for this, and then there's a side that they look at the flag and whatever that flag represents to you, so be it, but then there's a lot of people that really just want to play football. They don't want to have to pick sides. They just wants to play football, the game that they loved doing as a child, the game they make a lot of money to provide for their families to — you know – from where they come from. A lot of those players are frustrated because they feel like they have to choose.
(....)
COOPER: If you could just speak to that — when you see the flag and you see what these players are doing, is it to you disrespectful to the flag?
BOYER: It hurts me every time, I will say that. I will say it hurts me. Because I know these guys personally, I know that is not their intent to disrespect. I don't see it that way, but that's because I've had those conversations, I think. So, as an outsider, I can understand how you would view it that way. You know, on the veteran side of the family — you know — veterans issues — we have 22 veterans taking their own lives a day right now. We have a lot of issues on that. So that's something that I think needs to be spoken about more and maybe demonstrated in some way, but we could never do something like that during the Anthem, right? And I've actually spoken to, you know, to players about potentially — I mention that stuff too that this is obviously — racism in America absolutely exists. It is an issue. We need to fix it. We're a great country, probably the greatest country, but we can be a hell of a lot greater and I just think that, if a lot of those guys would recognize that it's not the only issue, I think more people from that other side — that polarized opposition — may listen and open up more a little bit.
(....)
WARD: I think the league is in a unique position because we don't know how to deal with it, I mean, with the remarks of Trump coming out on Friday night. I look at — we talk about unity in the NFL, right? And so, it seems like every NFL team was trying to figure out how to do it the right way, and they totally just bombed it and the leader of our league, Roger Goodell, he was nowhere to be found. So, through Sunday, teams were trying to figure out, what do we do this after his remarks. You saw Pittsburgh Steelers and you saw how we did it. We totally dropped the ball. Tennessee and Seattle, they didn't want to be a part of it either way. They stayed in the locker room. Other teams stayed out and then finally on Monday night, and it kills me to say this, it hurts me to say this, the Dallas Cowboys, I think, came close to getting it right. You know, Jerry Jones, the owner, kneeled down with his players to show support for the players that was going through the protests, but at the same time those same players stood for the National Anthem.
(....)
LEE: I was not buying that stuff, that show with the owners kneeling with the players with their arms locked up. I wasn't buying it because they're forgetting why this whole thing happened. If they want to stop it — if they want to unite the players, Colin Kaepernick should have a job in the NFL. So it's — it’s hypocritical for them to say we're all united, but we're forgetting the reason why this whole thing started.
