Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wants to make it clear: He doesn’t hate America; he just doesn’t like it very much.
Cuban has decided that the Mavericks will not play the national anthem before games because, according to sources close to him, “many feel anthem doesn’t represent them.” It’s a markedly different tune than Cuban sung in 2017, but that is to be expected after the NBA’s full surrender to social justice politics.
Source close to Mark Cuban says decision to not play Anthem before Mavs games isn’t because they don’t love U.S., but because many feel anthem doesn’t represent them, and they want to continue discussion of how to represent people from all communities when honoring U.S. at game.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) February 10, 2021
You will remember that those who defended national anthem protests frequently said that the protests had nothing to with the anthem. That was always a lie, as former quarterback Colin Kaepernick made clear when he started the protests. But Cuban is offering a polite reminder while he also continues to defend the NBA’s business relationship with the Chinese Communist Party.
Of course, many people “feel the anthem doesn’t represent them” because they have explicitly chosen to reject it. The anthem was not a political issue until Kaepernick made it one. Along with the American flag, the national anthem is one of the few universal symbols of unity we have in a country of some 330 million people. Cuban and the sports world decided to change that by backing Kaepernick’s protest and belittling anyone who objected to it.
Athletes and their defenders turned the anthem into a cultural battle in which former President Donald Trump was happy to join. Athletes could have chosen to embrace the flag, the anthem, and the American ideal as what they were pursuing. Instead, they have rejected it and, in pushing the narrative of Black Lives Matter, they have rejected reality along with it.
With the help of a sympathetic media complex, people like Cuban have actively chosen to divide the country, to serve with Trump as two sides of the same coin. They are then surprised that NBA ratings have tanked or that fans, finally back in stadiums as coronavirus restrictions have been eased, have taken to booing their protests.
Cuban’s move is nothing but woke posturing, designed to get favorable headlines, much like his occasional hint at running for president. It doesn’t do anything to help police reform, which, you might have forgotten, is the alleged excuse for hating the national anthem. It’s no different from kneeling for the anthem or putting “Black Lives Matter” on player jerseys — it’s a corporate-approved performative action.
Kaepernick, as mediocre a political thought leader as he is a football player, turned the flag and anthem into a political football. That is an indictment of the social justice politics he and his defenders push. That they feel the anthem doesn’t represent them says far more about their distorted, anti-American worldview than it does about the United States.
