protest

Pray for Iranian citizens, and root for them …

I was a freshman in high school when the Berlin Wall fell, when we saw something we never imagined possible: the fall of the Soviet Union and several communist countries.

What’s happening in Iran feels like that now.

It might not happen. We’ve seen uprisings before that ended in massive bloodshed, and the protests were quashed.

Iran’s dictatorial leaders will kill citizens in the days ahead, as they’ve been doing. I’m not the most religious person, but I pray for the people who need it. Iranians living under the thumb of pure evil require all the help they can get. Pray for these people and hope for some statues to fall.

Lingerie Football League Responds to NFL: ‘We Stand!’

This is not an Onion story.

(Courtesy: The Internet.)

It seems the ladies of the Lingerie Football League, which I knew existed in my dreams if not in reality, has literally taken a stand.

Whenever and wherever it is they play football, they’re standing for the National Anthem. I say God bless America and them and not just because I’m a 42-year-old single dad.

I was raised to stand during the National Anthem, remove my hat, put my hand over my heart, and to pay my respects to the American Flag. This was taught as far back as the 1980s and I cannot say with any degree of certainty whether that is still the case today. I’m pretty sure the San Francisco Public School System teaches its kindergartners to burn the flag while wearing Che Guevara T-shirts, but I could be off on that, too. I mean, if Alex Jones says it, it’s true, right?

(Courtesy: The Internet, and I pray this isn’t actually a child wearing a Che shirt and that the image is doctored.)

Back to the LFL. Let’s put the sophomoric jokes aside. This decision is to be respected and instills hope in me that America hasn’t completely lost its mind—a conclusion almost anyone could jump to given the current occupant of the White House and because the show Survivor is somehow still popular.

There are athletes of several ethnic backgrounds (don’t believe me? Follow this link) in the LFL and it’s reasonably assumed that some of them share concerns over police brutality against minorities, and want to call attention to it. But somewhere, somehow the League must’ve been educated in the 1980s and not in San Francisco:

“The LFL recognizes everyone’s First Amendment right to protest, but our nation’s flag and anthem are far too sacred,” the league said. “Too many fellow Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice, so that our flag and anthem continue in all its majesty.”

Leave it to the ladies to show the men how it’s done. There’s a time and a place for everything, and perhaps the LFL realized that performing an act that is clearly offensive to a majority of Americans might not be the best way to draw people to your cause, no matter how noble.

Go team.