January 19, 2015

Seattle Seahawks apologize: "We did not intend to compare football to the civil rights legacy of Dr. King."

"'We shall overcome #MLKDay,' the team’s official account tweeted Monday, which honors Martin Luther King, Jr. The tweet also included a picture of quarterback Russell Wilson crying after his victory Sunday and a quote from King that read: 'Faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first steps.'"

ADDED: It's so easy to put out this kind of shaming, and it's also easy to apologize. I think this shaming-apology cycle has gotten out of hand in social media. Another one that just happened is: "Lena Dunham has issued a pre-emptive apology for suggesting the storm over Bill Cosby's rape allegations is as significant as the slaughter of millions of Jews."
"Additionally I'm already aware comparing Bill Cosby to the Holocaust wasn't my best analogy. 'With Love from your special rape-hating Jew friend LENA.'"

53 comments:

rhhardin said...

People are willing to pay to watch football, is one difference.

Anonymous said...

Quit apologizing for everything!

sean said...

I would think that by Althouse standards, football is more important than civil rights.

Michael K said...

The vast majority of NFL players these days are black. The Seahawks played an incredible game the last 3 minutes. I understand the sentiment. Some people will complain about anything.

Rob said...

My favorite MLK Day moment is Oprah Winfrey leading a march of the "Selma" cast in remembrance of Dr. King. In previous years when she didn't have a movie to flog, Ms. Winfrey didn't feel the need for a remembrance march. This year, amazingly, she did. And the media reported it as if it were an actual thing, rather than a transparent PR stunt. Delightful!

Blue Ox said...

Awfully insensitive of the Seahawks.

Don't they realize that the proper way to honor Dr. King is with matinee NBA basketball?

Bob R said...

Grow a pair Seattle. It's not disrespectful to apply lessons from a great struggle to a modest one. Whiners need to be marginalized and shunned.

JRoberts said...

Hmm...

It looks like the Rev. Al Sharpton needs to make a visit to the Seattle Seahawks.

For a fee.

A.Very.Large.Fee.

Michael K said...

"Whiners need to be marginalized and shunned."

That covers most of Seattle.

rhhardin said...

Derbyshire on MLK and the movie Selma, which has decayed into a ghetto

"The inability of blacks to do anything much for themselves without whites is illustrated all over again by the subsequent fate of Selma — the town, not the movie...For all the bellyaching about "white supremacy," the evidence is that when there aren't whites around to supervise things, blacks sink into poverty and helplessness."

Derbyshire is just taking the data and coming to the conclusion.

I say it's betrayal by the media, producing horrible black leaders and horrible black aspirations.

One of the horrible things is crediting MLK beyond his actual performance.

Blacks became holy objects to liberals, which has destroyed the freedom of blacks.

Some blacks have noticed this, but the media strikes back.

Pete from Baltimore said...

In my opinion it was tacky. But its a lot less worse than when football players claim that God helped them win.Or when they pray to God to help them win a football game

[ interestingly enough, I don't see God mentioned by basketball, baseball or hockey player.Just football players.Im sincerely not sure as to why]

madAsHell said...

Well, Russell Wilson did make several comments about his teammates having faith in him, and he has faith in his teammates. I really believe that was the context for the tweet.

Unfortunately, it wasn't perceived in that context.

Known Unknown said...

In Ms. Dunham's case, at least people watched The Cosby Show.

madAsHell said...

Just football players.Im sincerely not sure as to why

So....you never played high school football.

SteveM said...

I think that football players refer to God more often than players in other sports is that the possibility of catastrophic injury, such as paralysis, is greatest in football. I think that it's fine for a player to thank or credit God for their physical abilities that resulted in a victory, as opposed to God somehow intervening in the game as a result of prayer.

MayBee said...

ADDED: It's so easy to put out this kind of shaming, and it's also easy to apologize. I think this shaming-apology cycle has gotten out of hand in social media

Amen.
It's so easy to feel you've accomplished something if you can attack someone and get them in trouble. In the end, though, the people who were outraged don't really care. They just needed a fix.

buster said...

"I don't see God mentioned by basketball, baseball or hockey players. Just football players."

It's not unusual to see a Latin American baseball player make the sign of the cross when coming to bat. If you're old enough to remember Jimmy Piersall, he drew a cross in the dirt of the batter's box with the tip of his bat before practically every pitch.

n.n said...

Dunham could compare pro-choice to the Holocaust, but even that would be a mismatch. Whereas an estimated 6 million Jews were murdered in camps during the socialist's reign, an estimated 100 million wholly innocent human lives have been casually terminated in American clinics since the legalization and subsequent normalization of elective abortion.

While a preponderance of allegations muddies the legal, and now social field, we can't even reach a consensus when a physical process observed and repeated billions of times in our lifetime begins and ends. What hope is there for legal and social standards, let alone moral standards, when scientific standard follow the prevailing whims.

Swifty Quick said...

One of the main reasons to stay away from twitter.

m stone said...

In this case, Dunham's "apology" may be worse than the offense if that's even possible.

Does any public figure know etiquette and have any self-respect?

Ann Althouse said...

It was hard to watch that Packers-Seahawk game yesterday and not think the gods were playing games of their own.

ALP said...

I think this shaming-apology cycle has gotten out of hand in social media.
----------
South Park did an episode that starred Alec Baldwin as the inventor of a social media app, which entailed implanting an antennae into one's head that immediately published each and every thought to the feed.

The name of the invention?

Shitter.

I think that sums up Twitter perfectly: a constant shit stream of thoughts that should have been kept private.

I am not a robot, but a cylon. Got a problem that?

chickelit said...

I don't believe that Lena Dunham can ever be shamed enough; the woman has absolutely no sense of the word. She deserves every ounce of mockery hurled her way.

chickelit said...

Dunham is rather like a female Michael Moore.

rcocean said...

I forget, why is Lena Dunham worthy of notice?

Is her TV show, which 98% of the USA didn't watch, still on?

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

This is a huge issue, and it speaks to the way that we abuse power and the way that celebrity allows for injustice.'

Well I glad she finally commented on her false rape allegations. This statement shows she has some ability to be insightful.

Oh wait. . . .

rcocean said...

In other news, we now learn that those "Ferguson activists" who were all upset about Officer Wilson, were bused and paid for by ultra-Leftist Billionaire George Soros. It cost him $33 Million.

I wonder what MLK would say about that.

rcocean said...

Too bad Crack couldn't hook up with George Soros - I bet George would pay him some $$$ to keep on yelling "Racist"

Scott said...

The feminization of American culture proceeds apace.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Lena Dunham has no talent, knows she has no talent and knows thwe world will soon realize she has no talent. That is the only explanation for her relentless PR stunts that shout "look at me dammit".

Curious George said...

Even in my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine a more perfect Packer loss.

ken in tx said...

Selma degraded into a ghetto after the Air Force closed their training base there.

chickelit said...

rcocean said...Too bad Crack couldn't hook up with George Soros - I bet George would pay him some $$$ to keep on yelling "Racist"

Perhaps that explains Crack's absence here. He hooked up with a Soros sponsor who then told him to focus on a broader audience.

Skyler said...

Nothing good ever comes from twitter. Why bother with it?

Ken B said...

Out of control! We hear this from Shirt-Shamer #1???

chickelit said...

Skyler wrote: Nothing good ever comes from twitter.

Then you're not doing it right.

traditionalguy said...

What was to be ashamed of???

Faith is actions taken in trust that God will back you up. So Russell Wilson and Martin King were doing the same faith acts in a long line of Christian men.

Are atheists again taking charge of telling Christian men how to act correctly in their relationship with God?

William said...

There were some strange, almost miraculous events that took place in those last few minutes. Wilson had screwed up the first half. Is it possible that he sold his soul to the Devil during the half time break and all that thanking God stuff was just cover. Cui bono. Seattle is already one of the most debauched cities in America whereas Green Bay is populated by the righteous. The Devil takes care of his own.

Beldar said...

I'm pretty sure that in the NFL, players are judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their positional statistics (yards per carry, sacks surrendered, etc.) and team results (games won and lost).

I'm okay with that. I think Dr. King would have enjoyed watching the modern NFL, despite its many and obvious flaws and excesses.

khesanh0802 said...

Aw come'on Ann. It wasn't Gods playing games it was Mike McCarthy screwing up. I can't find the article that talks about how damaging his time management is but this article lays out some of the problems. Though Bostick gets the blame I blame the coaches for the failure of handle the onside kick. Bostick should have been blocking - I am sure he had been coached to block - and let the ball fall into the waiting hands of Jordy Nelson. It is obvious that is the way the play was designed. As another coach is prone to say "Do your job".

Aha! The second half of this article clearly lays out McCarthy's game management shortcomings. The Packers were the better team, but their coach failed them.

Yancey Ward said...

Well, the Seahawks thing wasn't really slight at King or his accomplishments. There was nothing there that actually compares the civil rights movement with the Seahawks miracle yesterday. I took it for what it clearly was- a nod in King's direction.

Now, Dunham's statement was juvenile and ignorant, and she rightly was called out on it and apologized.

Laslo Spatula said...

Also: do not compare faithfulness in marriage to the civil rights legacy of Dr. King.

The hair is always meant to be split.

I am Laslo.

Herp McDerp said...

"Additionally I'm already aware comparing Bill Cosby to the Holocaust wasn't my best analogy."

Especially since her analogy puts anyone who is willing to contemplate the possibility that claims about Bill Cosby might not be true into the same category as Holocaust deniers.

Oh, crap. I'm not a robot. Hey, I wanted to be a robot!

David said...

The Gods are always playing their own game, which is why ours is so unpredictable.

Achilles said...

Michael K said...
"Whiners need to be marginalized and shunned."

"That covers most of Seattle."

The forty whiners are in santa clara.

Emil Blatz said...

As far as the Bill Cosby thing is concerned, I really do not care about it for its own sake, but only in the sense that the longer it is out there the more unavoidable the comparison to Bill Clinton becomes. And that's great.

Lena Dunham's 15 minutes were up 47 minutes ago.

The Packers should never have been suckered on the field goal fake. How likely is it that a team down that far at that stage of the game is going to settle for 3 points when they needed two touchdowns and a field goal at that time to pull ahead? The likelihood of that play was so great, there was no way GB should have been unprepared. Hrrrmph!

Anonymous said...

That just makes me wish I had a special, rape-hating Jew friend of my own.

Oh wait, I do. BRB.

gadfly said...

So where can I find MLK's apologies for lying, cheating, misrepresentating his religious faith and associating with known Communists?

Brando said...

I like how she has to throw in "rape hating" and "Jew" both to try and make clear she's not pro-rape (a truly brave and unique position to take) and to get a free pass on making light of the Holocaust (because being Jewish in 2015 means you can be as insensitive as you want about what happened to Jews in the 1940s).

There are some people who are really too stupid to use social media, and would be better off closing their accounts so as not to advertise their stupidity.

amielalune said...

I can't stand the Seahawks, but it was ridiculous to be offended by that. But I guess football teams aren't allowed to celebrate these days anyway.

I'm sorry they apologized; but of course, they would.

Anonymous said...

Only Dinesh may make this comparison....

Titus said...

I really felt bad the Packers lost that game.

My mom was crying. The state is in mourning.

The coach made some very bad decisions.

Anthony said...

Only mildly apropos here: Seahawks fan's gesture touches Packers family