Sports Editor for ‘The Nation’ Notably Refuses to Say ‘The Redskins’ on TV

EXCERPT:

ZIRIN: "What I think Donald Trump did, was he overplayed his hand dramatically. I think Donald Trump was in front of his base in Huntsville, Alabama and that lizard brain of his, that knows how to speak to the worst impulses of his audience I think thought to itself spontaneously, I am going to go after black dissenters in the National Football League and they will love it.' I will isolate them, and I will be on the side of my base. It's red meat that they will chew up and love. What he did not expect, what he did not understand, maybe because he never played the game of football is that there is a brotherhood that exists in the locker room. And maybe it was only a small minority of NFL players who were willing to take a knee with Colin Kaepernick to protest inequities in the criminal justice system and police violence, but there is a majority of NFL players who will stand together against the idea that they don’t have freedom of speech, against the idea that the president of the United States should somehow call for their jobs and call for them fired, one of the most grossly inappropriate things I have seen. And then, there is that thing that George mentioned, whihc is so important, that -- that use of the language to speak about players' mothers. You’ve got to understand that the mother in the NFL locker room holds an esteemed place. It is like a team mother. And when you go after people’s mothers it will be like what Josh Norman of the Washington football team said last night; he said, Donald Trump is not my president. And what it felt like to me, it was like he came up to my house and he used different language, but he said it was like somebody urinating on my house. And at some point you have to stand up for yourself and say stop doing that. If you just let someone do that, then you're something less than a human being. So, I think yesterday was about players standing up for their humanity and it was a day that I think that will go down in sports history.”