Remember that stadium where the band would come out, they’d announce the anthem, and you’d have to look for the little flag flying over the end zone bleachers so you’d know which way to face?
Remember that place?
That was every stadium, not too long ago. No more.
Buy a game ticket today, and you’d think the main event was the one before the game. And depending on who’s playing, you might even be right. Field-size stars and stripes, jets in formation overhead, men and women in uniform trotted out like props, like cheap show ponies, to hold the flag.
And always, always, a little guy bursting into sobs in the arms of his father, just returned from overseas to surprise him.
Full orchestration, six-part harmony, and by God this one’s bigger and more impressive than last year, more colorful than the team in the next state, plus we got more soldiers in uniform than the stadium across town.
Overproduced. Maybe even obscene. ‘Cause if it’s not bigger, louder, brighter, then we’re just not… you know… patriotic enough.
But we all get up, we take that hat off, we stop chatting and we put that hand over the heart. Attention, home of the brave, applaud. Have a beer.
A year and a half ago, Playin’ in the Dirt featured a piece about NFL players choosing not to stand for the anthem, choosing not to worship a piece of cloth and a few notes of music in a rote, shallow display when our countrymen are oppressed under that same flag. I agreed, and still do, that there may be good reason not to stand for the anthem, if we’re not as free as we thump our chests and say we are.
And certainly that is the case. Some of us are not free, and if that’s the case, then none of us are free.
But still I choose to stand. Still I choose to put my hand over my heart. Still I sing along, out of tune, and blink back a tear.
We watched Spotlight here at my house a few nights ago. Stick with me now, I’m tying this together.
Best Picture. It’s why I stand up.
We live in a land where a handful of reporters on a mission can pierce the obsidian facade of an infallible institution.
They can, at huge personal risk, and at immense financial risk to their employer, find the truth and report it. They can bring down the mighty, reveal the corrupt, redeem the victim.
They can do all this because it’s in our Constitution.
But more so, they do it because they’re courageous. And they do it because you don’t have to put on a uniform, carry a gun, and travel to a foreign land to put yourself on the line for our freedom.
With great respect for the men and women who take an oath and serve our nation’s military out of a sense of duty to our country, they are not the only people who keep us free.
The one who busts our chains may be the man behind the keyboard, the woman behind the camera, the editor down at the police station demanding to see a priest’s arrest record.
That’s why I stand. Because we live in a nation where we aren’t just allowed to seek truth, to think for ourselves. We’re expected to do it.
Meanwhile, in this great free and ironic land, Colin Kaepernick is out of a job because he wouldn’t stand up. Instead, he pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to bring change to the lives of others.
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