The NFL, ESPN, and Mike Wilbon
by Jon Rappoport
October 13, 2017
I write this article because there is a pernicious new understanding loose in the land: private property doesn’t exist, no individual owns anything, and “everything belongs to everybody.” It’s basically a Marxist view, to the degree that Marx’s gibberish can be understood.
Over at ESPN, vaunted show host, Mike Wilbon, weighed in on Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, who announced that any of his players who didn’t stand up for the National Anthem would be benched.
Wilbon: “He [Jones] said he wanted to honor the Anthem…But now it just seems like it was as phony as a three-dollar bill. And the word that comes to mind, and I don’t care who doesn’t like me using it, is ‘plantation.’”
Wilbon characterized Jones’ feelings as follows: “The players are here to serve me, and they will do what I want no matter how much I pay them. They are not equal to me.”
The next day, Wilbon doubled down: “I was critical of Jerry Jones yesterday, I used the phrase ‘plantation mentality.’ Let me repeat it: ‘plantation mentality.’ That’s what it comes off as.”
I see. Jerry Jones is the slaveowner. Some of his players are millionaires. They’re the slaves, because Jones says they can’t play if they won’t stand up for the Anthem at games.
Apparently, Wilbon thinks the owner of a company should have no control over what his employees do ON COMPANY TIME. If employees want to sit in the lobby at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday and put on a recording of the National Anthem and kneel, the owner has no right to intercede. He has no right to spell out consequences.
Maybe Wilbon thinks the NFL is a public utility owned and operated by the federal government.
Wilbon says the Cowboys owner doesn’t think his players are equal to him. Well, IN THE CONTEXT OF THE COMPANY, of course that’s what Jones thinks. He’s the boss. The players work for him. Is there something about that relationship Wilbon doesn’t understand?
Does Wilbon think a pro football game is a public event, like the signing of a bill by the President? His network, ESPN, pays a fortune for the right to broadcast NFL games. Advertisers, in turn, fork over huge sums to ESPN. Sounds quite similar to BUSINESS.
In case there is any doubt, Jerry Jones isn’t saying his players can’t hold press conferences on their own time, beyond team property, and express their views on the Anthem, America, or police brutality against black people.
Wilbon obviously confuses the public and private sector. Despite the fact that advertising dollars pay his salary—which ought to be a clue—he views a football game as devoid of private ownership. He should check the ad rates for the Super Bowl.
Perhaps Wilbon, like many other people, sees the NFL as a “national institution.” Therefore, curtailing the absolute right to kneel during the anthem violates “a public trust.” Such murky ideas are popular these days, because the bedrock concept of private property and ownership has faded away.
And no, I’m not talking about football players as private property; I’m talking about NFL teams. They’re companies, and they have owners and buildings and fields and stadiums and merchandise.
If these teams manage to bamboozle government entities into paying for stadiums with taxpayer dollars, fans should organize boycotts.
A few weeks ago, there was a flurry of opinion-articles claiming the NFL is a non-profit entity which, outrageously, doesn’t pay taxes. That is incorrect. The teams are profit-making businesses, obligated to pay taxes. The NFL league office was a non-profit, until 2015. It isn’t anymore. Now here’s a story: Wilbon might want to look into the NFL Commissioner’s salary, during the years when the league office was a non-profit. Fifteen million a year? Twenty? Thirty? That’s ridiculous.
Anyway, back to business. As in competition. If a handful of billionaires want to start their own pro football league, and go up against the NFL, they can certainly give it a try. No one is stopping them. All the rules of ownership and private property apply. Perhaps the owners of the new teams in the new league can demand all their players kneel during the National Anthem. See how that goes over. See how that sells. The owners can call their league Progressive American Football. After every change of possession on the field, the team with the ball must move to the Left (on television screens). Why not?
On the other hand, those billionaires could shift to the Right. Call their new league American Patriot Football. Before each game, there would be a half-hour parade featuring hundreds of heavily militarized cops in full armament marching up and down. On big screens, old footage from wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, Grenada, Libya. Play the Anthem seven times in a row before kickoff. Make Dick Cheney the Commissioner.
Or start a Radical Green League. No tackling. Only touching. Each team must have at least seven women in the starting lineup. In all stadiums before kickoff, televise Al Gore giving a speech about how he made a billion dollars fronting for global warming and the end of the world. Vendors sell tofu dogs, sparkling water from the Himalayas. Every player gets a trophy every Sunday. At halftime, burn the American flag on the 50-yard line.
The CNN League. The players work for CNN. There is a field, but no games. The players just stand there and scream about Trump for three hours.
If these new leagues can’t get television contracts, broadcast the games online.
But in each case, owners own the teams. Get it? They don’t own the players, they employ them. They can set rules for what happens on company time. It’s fairly simple. If the employees don’t like the rules, they can quit.
A few NFL players have done that. Of course, their reason was avoiding getting their skulls dented and waking up one day unsure of their name.
Football. Gotta love it.
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Reblogged this on Right Wing Conservative Jew's News, Conservative Politics News Site and commented:
Areally FUNNY article!! ????????
Wonderful article and great examples on what some the alternatives are for those that kneel. Maybe The National Anarchy League could have no rules and the spectators and athletes could freely exchange positions freely as they feel the need.
The Antifa League
Both teams suit up in identical black uniforms — with full padding and helmets — and invite 100 burly guys from the stands on to the field to fight it out.
While that is going on on the field, the water boys of both teams throw ‘water balloons’ — filled with urine and feces — at the ‘fans’ in the stands.
I haven’t watched the NFL in a few years. I might watch the Antifa League, if at halftime there is one-quarter of a lingerie league game,
Just want to point out that the NFL has mandated that players speak to the media, on their own time, off the field and threatened them with fines of $500,000.00 for not doing so….a time when players like former Seahawk Lynch could have spoken out about any issue, but chose not to….where was the slavery/plantation comment then? Oh, forcing them to attend pressers is not the same as telling them to stand for the anthem? http://www.espn.com/nfl/playoffs/2014/story/_/id/12237417/marshawn-lynch-seattle-seahawks-uses-same-answer-repetition-super-bowl-media-day-here-get-fined
The players do have a right to kneel, just as I have the right to turn off the game for the rest of the season. Screw’em! They’re all over paid anyways. When I found out what they were going to do to the fans just to get inside, I quit drinking Miller and Budweiser Beers, and decided to never go to a game again. Ain’t no skin off my nuts to never watch another game! What’s in it for me to spend that kind of money? NADA G.D. THING!
This is like the Weinstein business. Instead of focusing on the real issues, propaganda and raping peoples’ (the public) minds, MSM focuses on some misdirecting misdeeds. Distraction. Redirect attention away from the real issues, like shredding the constitution. MSM: ‘Weinstein has a plantation mentality’. OK, so now look at the output of Hollywood, and parse the output of the cesspool.
Jon focuses on the real issues, one of the few reads to stay with.
NFL aside..unfortunately for the working class, the “nonsense” and “gibberish” is true…none of us s actually allowed to own our own property.
Don’t believe me?
Try not paying your land taxes. Try building an add on to “your” house without massive supervision by government officials.
BTW, your children and your body are owned by the government as well.
Try to keep your children home and not subject them to the insidious brainwashing of the public school system without permission from massah,and see what happens.
Among other issues where “your” property is simply not your own..
As for the difference between “employed” and selling your time like a prostitute, there is NO difference…they OWN you for the time you have sold them.
That is why the labor movements fought tooth and nail when corporations came in under cover 14th amendment rights for slaves and created one of the most demeaning and dehumanizing systems to exist since Caesar. .,.The corporation. blind pursuit of profit at everyone else’s expense.
While other countries have “socialism” to protect ther emplyees being OWNED outright..NOT here in the US.
You have the right to take that bootheel in your faces and then listen to Bill O’Reilly tell you that you need to “shut up” about it.
Corporation is a feudalist totalitarian organization.
It was clear to previous generations, but has taken over 100 years of public brainwashing to get people to forget that fact.
addendum: about corporate corruption- it is deep and endemic in the US. Many of the so called defense contractors are in fact CIA fronts.
AND corporate corruption is so deeply intertwined with government that the status quo is unredeemable.
When I was 4 years old , many decades ago, we were living near Baltimore.
I recall being taken to some station to be fingerprinted.
My mother had been working for Westinghouse.
She was thinking about Blowing the whistle on some shady activity they were involved in that she had stumbled across. She must have told someone because in the same space of time we received several phone calls threatening the lives of my brother and myself…I recall my dog was run over, deliberately, and shortly thereafter we moved across country.
I have come to suspect that Westinghouse is one of the thousands of CIA front companies.
In America as a citizen you have literally never really had any rights..you have the right to prostitute your time,
You are locked in by a Totalitarian communist style government on the one hand where you and your property are owned by the government who rent you out to its various corporate johns for service..it then shakes down “your” income and property for ttaxes which it uses to subsidize its “free market” worldwide…which means privatizing profit (to corporations) and socializing cost to the populace.
On the other hand you face by the Totalitarian dictatorship of corporation..
Either way your go you are screwed…best bet?
Turn away…give them as little of your time, your tears and your imagination as you can.
great reply Bunny.
you nailed the whole enchilada.
good for you. thank you.
I prefer “Marx’s gibberish to yours – as yours accepts unregulatedcapitalism and war profiteering as other than sheer evil.
I long ago concluded that football is absurd and of zero interest -a “sport” backed by blood-thirsty capitalism…a “sport” whoseprofessional players rarely live to age 60/
Football is a game, Games have rules. No freedom here.
You are there to win the game and entertain the public, That is your only job.
You are not there to express your political views. If you don”t like it, leave it..
If you keep doing that. your boss has the right to fire you. You are an employee, you are not the the owner.
The problem here is that football players see themselves as stars. The crowd cheers at every move they make. So, it gets to them and they start believing that they are semi gods that can do anything they want.and that they will get a pass. Nothing could be more wrong.
What they do not understand, is that the public only cheers because they love and are proud of their home State. They want their State to win. That’s all.
I agree with the private property part but disagree with the ‘public event’ bit. Since most venues of every major sport in the US has been built with tax payer $$ and nearly every military and intelligence outfit is involved I think a business and public event are one in the same.
Remember sporty spice jock sniffing “journalists” are true believers in the failed ideas of the 19th century German bum Karl Marx.
They’ll cheerlead until the comrades come for their Dacha and Mercedes Benz then they won’t like the collective so much.
Also the NFLPA player’s association union is taking money from the world wrecking Hungarian rat George Soros. His plan is to destroy all cultural traditions and profit in the process.
Thursday night football didn’t show the anthem or the protest outside the stadium. A Panthers fan sucker punched an elderly Eagles fan and ran away just to show what patriotic comrades do to each other. Forward!
Some local churches had their stupor bowl party shut down by comrade kommissar Goodell a few years ago.
So much for that what’s mine is yours Marxist fairy tale crap that has zero application in reality.
There shouldn’t be any winners and no score should be kept. The most talented players should have their knees capped by Tonya Harding so everything is equal. Equality über alles!
It was real and fun with the NFL for awhile but it wasn’t real fun. I sold all of my football crap back in February on CL and haven’t watched a game in several years. I won’t be watching again no matter of comrade kommissar Goodell goes or not.
How about a collective comrades league where everyone will have the same 40 yard dash time, and be the same height and weight. No player will be more exceptional than any other player. All comrades will make the same amount and will be paid in beets and vodka.
The cheerleaders will all be plain looking farm women who don’t wear any makeup.
If one team should outscore another or have more victories those will be redistributed to the less fortunate teams.
But no team will pull that off because scores will be not be kept and there will be no wins or losses. The glorious equality will finally be achieved. Forward!
Talking about equality, how about eliminating the Jersey Numbers of the players?
That should do it. LOL
Yes, let’s hit every possible angle to try to make this stupid issue right. It’s business get with the program…we will honor the flag. Issue ultimatums no respect for the flag, no playing. It’s not about the flag or the fighter jets, or the military, Its about bringing attention to injustice. It was always a respectful protest until Trump shot his mouth off. Neither Trump or Jones have any right to moralize since neither are moral human beings. Jones didn’t seem to care too much about one of his players convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. The player threw furniture, strangled and threatened to kill her. No problem, Jones signed a contract giving this player 11 million…just one example since Jones has never considered violence against women as going against NFL rules. This issue is not about business at all. It’s about exploitation.
“Or start a Radical Green League. No tackling. Only touching. Each team must have at least seven women in the starting lineup.”
Can I touch the cheerleaders???
PLEEEEEZE!!!!
*pant, pant, pant*