So I went to my first professional sporting event in a while two night ago. (for purposes of this post I am not counting NCAA D1 football or basketball
) We really need to stop playing the anthem before sporting events. The idiocy I witnessed first hand made that abundantly clear.
As the flag bearers made their way onto the ice and the anthem singer was introduced, a few of our fellow citizens who don't understand what the first amendment actually means or what anyone who "served their country" actually was working to preserve yelled to someone a few rows in front of me "take off your hat!!" There were a mix of other words that generally look like **** on USCHO thrown around as well. Not realizing that continually yelling during the anthem to the dude with a hat on was every bit as disrespectful as they believed he was being, they kept up the verbal assault.
Anthem ends.
As is the custom of most idiots like the people doing the yelling at the guy with the hat on (and most fans who are not the least bit jerk-like as well) nearly everyone around me sat down as the last second of the word "brave" was being sung. (quite nicely by the young anthem singer I might add) I of course remain standing until the flag bearers remove the flags from the playing area, as this is the preferred way of showing respect and what I have always been taught to do.
Not content to let this poor dude who for whatever reason did not remove his cap (maybe he didn't ever learn the custom, maybe he was a cancer survivor who was self-conscious of his bald head, maybe he was making a first amendment protected and celebrated political statement -- who the fvck cares why) feel sufficiently castigated by a couple of dozen strangers he never met and will never bother, the verbal assaults increased. One idiot fan yelled "I didn't serve for you to be a disrespectful a-hole!" Uh, yeah you did motherfvcker. People all around me are yelling similar, idiotic things. All because someone didn't take off a God d am n hat.
This kept up for a few more minutes and then seemed to die down. Well, a couple of hours later when the game was over it clearly had not sufficiently died down. As two of the groups were leaving the guy with the hat and guy doing the most vocal and ridiculous verbal baiting got into a shoving match once they reached the concourse area. The guy complaining seemed bent further out of shape than one would think anyone could get over something like this and I later learned some around believed he said his father had also been in the military and had been killed in action during the Viet Nam war. The shoving escalated and it looked like it was very quickly going to get out of hand. I and a number of other people separated the two main combatants as best as we could, me doing my best to tie up the jerk while calmly trying to tell him his beef "isn't worth spending a weekend in jail for, walk away" and "be proud of what you believe in while being the bigger man" and other such crap when in reality I wanted to team up with the guy in the hat and kick the 5h!t out of this blowhard fool, regardless of whatever personal reasons he had to believe what he believed.
This is the America we live in folks. Here are two people, both white men, both almost certainly residents of the same community, both big enough hockey fans to pay money to watch the game live. Yet one wanted to kick the crap out of the other, largely because he has a misapplied sense of patriotism and misguided love of country. Hell, other than a love of hockey and being a white dude I bet he doesn't have another stinking thing in common with me, but based on the two minutes of the anthem he'd think I'm a stand-up guy, a lot like him probably, since I always stand at attention for the anthem, hold my hand over my heart and remain so until the flags are removed.
The whole episode made me sad. Made me sad for the way the jerk probably has nothing going on to make him truly happy, and if he does he's even a bigger Dick who does need to get his *** handed to him. Sad for the dude with the hat, who went to a hockey game to have a good time and had a good portion of his night ruined. Sad for the friends and family who felt scared and helpless as the two almost came to real blows. Sad that anyone in American can be this blind to what the ideals of our country are supposed to be.
But this is the America we live in. Probably the one we deserve. But whatever else we do, we gotta quit playing the anthem before sporting events.
