Forty Niner Is No “Patriot” By RALPH BAILEY

Just when you think a topic has long died someone digs up the horse and starts pounding! To flip the script on something President Reagan used to say, Here we go, again. On more than one occasion in me nearly 20 years in radio some unscrupulous knucklehead will ask, ‘Why don’t you say something completely off the reservation and draw maybe even national attention?’. It’s a unethical yet viable shortcut to fame but a road I choose not to travel. But in the lofty air of national opinion makers it seems the battle is to see whose sharp wit cuts deeper and whose idealistic supposition can keep up with the intellectual Joneses. And never was that more exhibited than by the comments of ESPN Reporter Pablo S. Torre who jumped in the bag full o nuts along with Brandon Marshall and fellow reporter Steven A. Smith all dubbing Colin Kaepernick a “Patriot”. No one will question the Forty-Niner quarterback and multi millionaire’s right to spit in the eye of the very nation that provides the very freedom of opportunity to attend college, enter the NFL draft and become one of the richest African Americans in the United States.. He has the right to ignore the sacrifice my grandfather and men of his generation made by placing themselves in harm’s way for a nation that treated them like POWs after they retuned home from WWII. He even has the right to make false claims about helping turn around a nation and the plight of a group of people despite the fact he has done nothing short of a 90 second protest before an NFL game, to actually effect sincere change. But to call this mixed up kid a Patriot is the ultimate in self promotion and allusions of grandeur. All I’m saying is before we dub this football player the next Crispus Attucks, let’s make sure Colin knows who he is.