Back that thing up

Or, to put it another way: The Wheels On the Papa John's Bus Go Beep ... Beep ... Beep ...

Which is to say, it's always fun to watch clueless doofuses trip all over themselves backtracking, and there are few doofuses more clueless than John Schnatter and the boys at Papa John's Pizza. A couple of weeks ago Papa John himself came out and said the NFL's failure to quash its players' constitutional right to protest was hurting his business, a statement of such dubious provenance you wondered if someone fed it to him.

(Like, I don't know, maybe Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who made a big ol' public display of kneeling with his players, then threatened to fire any of them who did it again.)

Anyway ... apparently Schnatter and his company have had a change of heart, after two weeks of being laughed at on social media -- partly because it apparently never occurred to Schnatter that his very public support for a hugely unpopular president might have more to do with the sales slippage than the NFL's failure to go all jackboots on the help.

At any rate, now Papa John's has come out with a mealy series of corporate tweets in which they avowed that, gosh, no, they weren't opposed to the American right to protest, and, gee, of course they stand with the players' stance against racial inequality. And they're really sorry if it came off otherwise.

Like that was supposed to fool anyone.

Truth is, Schnatter's original statements dovetail neatly with the hijacking of the protests, which is that they're about Disrespecting The Flag/The Troops/The Good Old USA. They clearly aren't, but the goal here is to obscure the real message. And that's the goal because the forces who've done the obscuring (most notably, Our Only Available President) don't believe the message is valid.

In their hearts of hearts, they simply don't believe it's a problem that police officers are shooting people of color in situations where they probably shouldn't be shooting them. They make excuses for it. They draw false equivalencies. They tell us white people get shot by the cops, too.

(Personally, the Blob thinks the explosion in concealed carry permits has led directly to some of this. In a lot of cases, police officers are drawing down on the citizenry in situations where they didn't used to simply because they don't know what they're rolling up on anymore. And so they're a lot jumpier and a lot more trigger happy. It's a theory.)

Anyway ... that's how the protests became something they aren't, which is disrespecting America/the flag/the troops.

Even though, in a lot of cases, those players kneeling are doing so with their heads bowed and their hands over their hearts.

Even though it was a Green Beret's idea that they kneel.

Even though many of them have family members in the military themselves.

But, you know, never mind that.