The latest expression of white tribalism prompted by the protests in Ferguson is the disavowal of the St. Louis Rams football team by a local bar after some of the players signaled their support of the Ferguson activists by appearing on the field with their arms in the symbolic “hand up” position adopted by protestors. According to the report in the Huffington Post, the bar owners felt it incumbent upon themselves to signal their tribal allegiances by vowing on social media to switch their loyalties from the hometown team to the Kansas City Chiefs, while urging “customers to ‘stand up to thugs who destroy our community’.”  Yeah, they used the word “thugs”!  

When they experienced pushback for equating athletes exercise of free speech with thugery, the representatives of the bar suddenly decided that free speech was important after all – for themselves, at least, if not for the Rams players, responding with this opus:

Just to clarify our point of view at Time Out.

We SUPPORT FREEDOM OF SPEECH

We SUPPORT PEACEFULL DEMONSTRATION

We are NOT TAKING SIDES ON THE FERGUSON TRAGEDY

We DISAGREE WITH BRINGING THE PROTEST TO A NATIONWIDE PROFESSIONAL SPORTING EVENT.

We welcome all opinions because we believe in the first amendment, just PLEASE respect each other!

Just to clarify our point of view at Time Out. We SUPPORT FREEDOM OF SPEECH We SUPPORT PEACEFULL DEMONSTRATION We are NOT TAKING SIDES ON THE FERGUSON TRAGEDY We DISAGREE WITH BRINGING THE PROTEST TO A NATIONWIDE PROFESSIONAL SPORTING EVENT. We welcome all opinions because we believe in the first amendment, just PLEASE respect each other!

Yeah, sure. they’re not taking sides. And to make sure you know it, they used lots of capital letters.  And, of course, pigs fly. A commercial, publicly accessible bar can take a stand, but athletes can’t because more people see football games than patronize the Time Out. Have you ever noticed that folks in this particular tribe (the one that camps on the right side of the river), always seem to think that freedom of speech is sooooo important, except when it doesn’t support their point of view?

Nor is it just the athletic arena that is supposed to be free of real life. Remember when some St. Louis symphony goers got all huffy because they were subjected to a short, respectfully orchestrated protest at a performance that asked them to spare a few minutes from their comfortable and cultured complacency in order to witness a moving reminder that life isn’t nearly so nice for young men like Michael Brown?

This free speech for me, but not you attitude is not new; it’s status quo in conservative circles where every day Fox news clones are all atwitter over some liberal’s exercise of free speech that, in turn, causes logic-challenged wingers to go ballistic. In the political sphere, I think it was George W. Bush who made a habit of restricting “free speech” to reservations far away from media attention, effectively censoring the expression of opposition sentiment. Such “free speech zones” have since them become routine.

This carefully monitored, almost private exercise of free speech  is evidently what the folks at the Time Out Sports Bar & Grill expect to be the norm when it involves a point of view they don’t like. If a few individuals had stood up on national TV at the Rams game and made a show of their unconditional support for anyone who wears a police badge, I bet we wouldn’t have heard a peep from them.  Just like the folks who try to censor the opposition by segregating them in free speech zones also insist on extending freedom of speech to a rich man or corporations’ pocket-book. But hey, rich men are always right and corporations, unlike Rams’ players and other thugs, are people. We’ve all learned over the past few election cycles that dollar bills create their own free speech megaphone when they speak.

Whereas black NFL players are saying they’d refuse to play for a team owned by Rush, and

Whereas Post-Dispatch columnist Kevin Horrigan explains that Limbaugh hates socialism and that the NFL is a highly socialistic organization, and

Whereas NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell believes that because of Rush’s racism, Limbaugh should not be allowed to buy an NFL team,

Be it resolved that we will all go over to St. Louis Democratic activist Peter Glickert’s new site, No Rush Limbaugh for the St. Louis Rams, and sign his petition. He aims to get 5,000 signatures by November 15th, and the site looks to be going viral. He got fifty signatures in less than a day, and the word is spreading. In fact, KSDK is covering it without Glickert even notifying them about it.

Of course, Glickert is also getting negative attention in the form of threatening e-mails. No surprise there. Rush is a purveyor of hate, and the dittoheads follow that lead.

Click here to sign the petition.

Update: Petitions on this one are the fad? Anyway, Brave New Films has one going as well. I signed both. Might as well.

Black NFL players are saying that, considering Limbaugh’s history of racism, they would refuse to play for the Rams if he became an owner. Think Progress gives us a short history of his racist remarks, starting most notably with his comment about Donovan McNabb and including his opinions about two black kids beating up a white kid on a Belleville school bus:

Indeed, as CNN reported at the time, ESPN fired Limbaugh from Sunday NFL Countdown for “his statement that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.” But, of course, Limbaugh has a long sordid history with making racist remarks. Some of his more recent lowlights:

• “Look, let me put it to you this way: The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
• “We need segregated buses. … This is Obama’s America.”
• “President Obama is black. And I think he’s got a chip on his shoulder.”
• Democrats are interested in Darfur to secure black “voting bloc.”
• “Minorities never do anything for which they have to apologize.”
• Obama’s nomination for president “goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.”
• Obama is a “halfrican-American.”

Advising the NFL to block Limbaugh’s pursuit of an NFL franchise, St. Louis Dispatch sports columnist Bryan Burwell wrote recently, “Dancing with Limbaugh is like dancing with a snake. Eventually, the snake will bite you. That’s his nature.”

If you think the Rams are pitiful now, wait till you see what they’re like if Limbaugh buys in. He’ll do to them what dubya did to the whole country–except that shrub took over a reasonably healthy enterprise and ran it into the red.