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Americans have become inured to the spectacle of businesses getting woke and going broke.  Social justice eternal grievance requires ignoring the conventions of society, such as recognizing it’s not terribly bright, if one is running a business, to insult any significant portion of one’s potential customers.  Take the case of The Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, VA, a formerly popular business that ejected Trump Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and her family for the crime of working for the President of the United States.  The New York Post reports:

A small town in Virginia is trying to recover its image after The Red Hen restaurant famously refused to serve President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

The Roanoke Times reported Sundaythat a regional tourism board is pulling together emergency funds to boost its digital marketing campaign.

Normally that money is saved. But officials agreed the region is in desperate need of positive coverage.

Imagine that.  The backlash from the original incident forced the restaurant to close its doors for at least two weeks, and the restaurant and town continue to receive notices of varying degrees of politeness from the public about their determination never to darken their respective doors again.

I’ve been writing about the poor choices of the NFL and its social justice whining warriors for some time.  To read them, merely type in “NFL” in the SMM search bar.  But here’s a sampling from June of 2018’s Donald Trump: Calling The NFL’s Bluff:

This is where the NFL made its most serious mistake and went down the road to social justice ‘get woke, go broke’–glory. The moment any NFL team allowed any player to break the rules, to stand out, to think themselves something special, to exalt their own sociopolitical tantrums over the business of football–winning games–that’s when they cut their own business throats.  Once a team allowed players to get away with that, there would be no end to their demands, demands that would have constituted a breach of contract not many years earlier.  Remember when professional athletes were expected to sport neat, manly haircuts?

The other element is inescapably racial. With some 70% of the League comprised of black players, the use of the race card as a form of extortion was inevitable. Combined with Social Justice ideology, which requires eternal outrage and grievance, it wasn’t necessary for players to have concrete, rational concerns and arguments, merely to repeat pre-programmed progressive narratives of injustice and oppression.  While players seem immune to the irony involved in huge, steroid-infused adolescents in adult bodies being paid millions of dollars for playing a children’s game claiming to be members of an oppressed, racially abused class, that irony has not been lost on normal Americans, who are not impressed.

And consider this from December of 2017’s NFL: The Wilted Rose:

‘It’s not about the national anthem or the flag,’ vacuous players whine. But Americans notice their idiotic kneeling protests take place only on game days during the playing of the national anthem and feel their intelligence insulted. They feel no less insulted when players hide in their plush locker rooms during the anthem; that only magnifies the insult.

Americans are tolerant people. They don’t envy others their success. But they expect a certain degree of humility and gratitude from those whose outrageous financial success–for playing a children’s game–is dependent on their continuing interest and patronage. Arrogant entitlement is not becoming. Just ask Hillary Clinton about that.

And consider this from To Sail Beyond The Sunset, by Robert A. Heinlein:

The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance. They were idolized and treated as leaders; their opinions were sought on everything and they took themselves just as seriously…

Published in 1987–31 years ago–the societal derangement about which Heinlein spoke has, if anything, worsened today.

Thus it is with head-shaking amusement, and not a little dismay, that I discovered the latest American business to willfully commit suicide, as Powerline reports: 

Credit: Chris Muir, Day By Day Cartoon

Nike has chosen the star of its 30th anniversary #JustDoIt advertising campaign: Colin Kaepernick. At first glance, it seems weird for an athletic shoe company to select as its corporate icon someone who is no longer an athlete, and was never a star. At second glance, it gets weirder…

John Hinderaker makes a trenchant point.  SJWs are wailing that the football season is starting and Kaepernick is not playing. Oh, the injustice of it all!  It’s RACISM, and TRUMP!  But when Kaepernick was dropped like a hot potato, he was a backbencher determined to achieve notoriety by damaging his team and the game. In this, if not football, he has achieved a sort of success.

Nike apparently thinks Kaepernick has sacrificed everything, which tells you something about 21st century corporate America. Kaepernick is a multimillionaire whose ‘sacrifice’ consisted of kneeling during the National Anthem, wearing socks depicting police officers as pigs, and generally denouncing his country. Which has led to a second career as a leftist spokesman. That is not exactly a contender in the annals of Greatest Sacrifice Ever.

Further, Nike’s tag line, ‘Believe in something,’ naturally raises the question: Does it matter what you believe in? Any normal person would say that it does. After all, the worst monsters in human history–Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Nero, Hitler, Amin, bin Laden, Castro–all believed in something. It was just the wrong thing.

I’m sure Nike will fully support me,and take me on as a lavishly compensated spokesman because I believe in something: Nike just shot itself in its expensively clad foot.  Remember gentle readers, Kaepernick is the dolt that claimed police officers lynch people, and praised Fidel Castro.

Clay Travis has published a pertinent book: Republicans Buy Sneakers Too: How the Left Is Ruining Sports With Politics. He has the honor of having been banned by ESPN—which is no longer about leftist politics, we know because their new maximum leader said so—and CNN, which, to no one’s surprise, remains all about leftist politics.  They say so every day.

Fully supporting Nike’s corporate suicide gesture is a leftist celebrity, just the sort of man any business determined to be as woke as possible would want on their sideline at a time like this:

And whose support could possibly be more calculated to encourage potential customers to buy Nike products than the former president of Iran, a Muslim, terrorist supporting, murderous madman who would be delighted to see Kaepernick, and everyone who works for Nike, as dead as Nike’s sales are soon likely to be.  This is the guy who held our hostages, who threw gays off buildings, who tortured and murdered women.  You remember the whole “death to America” thing?  I’m sure he would have chanted “death to Nike,” if he thought it would be harmful to America.  For the moment, I’m sure he’s laughing his terrorist ass off.

Kaepernick is “one of the best Quarterbacks in the league”?  Who knew a Muslim terrorist despot followed American football, and did it so poorly?  Fox News reports:

Kaepernick also received support from several athletes, including Miami Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills who has followed Kaepernick in kneeling during the national anthem for the last two seasons.

However, not everyone was happy with the renewed partnership between Kaepernick and Nike. Some took to Twitter to show their burning — literally — rage at the brand’s decision.

This is one of my favorites:

And this is prophetic:

Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem during a 2016 preseason game to protest perceived racial injustices against African-Americans. The movement since took off, garnering the attention — and ire — of President Trump, NFL owners, players and fans of the sport.

Let’s see: “NFL owners, players and fans of the sport.”  Yup.  That’s pretty much everyone having anything to do with football.  Those are the people you definitely want to anger if you want to continue playing football.

Waffle Trainers, circle 1976

Fortunately, I won’t need to engage in a Nike boycott.  I haven’t worn Nike shoes since their invention of the iconic Waffle Trainer back in 1974.  Adidas shoes simply fit me better, and these days, I wear them only for casual wear anyway.  My aerobic athletic endeavors are primary on my trike, for which I wear specialized shoes with Shimano SPD cleats.

One might be amazed at Nike’s choices in this matter.  After all, the kneeling “protests” have badly damaged the NFL’s image and bottom line, which one might think of primary concern to any business.  One might also think Nike, probably being relatively well attuned to sports trends, would understand this and avoid the NFL’s folly.  But Leftists tend to believe that no progressive policy or ideology can possibly be wrong, which makes it rather difficult to objectively evaluate long-term economic trends.  Remember the “five year plans” of the Soviet Union, which are still enacted in the remaining communist dictatorships?  Objective analysis revealed such plans to be the height of stupidity, yet the left persisted in them, with catastrophic, even deadly, results.

Nike should also understand that it does not take a massive,national boycott and PR campaign to severely damage their fortunes.  Republicans buy athletic shoes too, and all that’s necessary is for them, and independents and other assorted patriots, to simply skip over Nike’s offerings when they’re shopping for new shoes.  It’s not as though there aren’t a great many other attractive choices, which is just another of those annoying little business things any shoe company should keep in mind.

Professional athletes–or ex-athletes in Kaepernick’s case–and entertainers are people of importance?  Who is truly important?  Our military, our teachers, doctors, nurses and the men and women who build our homes. Mothers.  Equally important are plumbers; the next time your sewer backs up and you’re knee deep in excrement, call Colin Kaepernick, or when someone is breaking into your home at 0-dark-30, call an entertainer.  That will end well.

But hey, Colin Kaepernick believes in something.  It’s foolish, based on faulty assumptions, and destructive, but he believes in it, and it has, with the exception of making him radioactive to professional football teams and about half of America, been fabulously successful for him thus far.  Apparently Nike seeks that kind of success.  They deserve it.