Dallas sportscaster Dale Hansen offered up a dose of the truth on WFAA last night with one of his legendary commentaries. He called out the hypocrisy of Donald Trump for saying he supports peaceful protest, just not this protest. Hansen, a veteran, called Donald Trump out for avoiding military service during the Vietnam War. Hansen noted his foot hurt too, but he served anyway, alluding to Trump’s five draft deferments for alleged bone spurs. Hansen went further, saying his best high school friend was killed in Vietnam and “he did not die so that you (Trump) could decide who is a patriot and who loves America more.”
And Dale Hansen was just getting started, saying “we should all be protesting how black Americans are treated in this country.”
The video and transcript of his scorching commentary are below. It should be required viewing for every American who thinks Colin Kaepernick and the NFL players taking a knee is un-American or unpatriotic. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
The young, black athletes are not disrespecting America or the military by taking a knee during the anthem. They are respecting the best thing about America. It’s a dog whistle to the racists among us to say otherwise.
They, and all of us, should protest how black Americans are treated in this country. And if you don’t think white privilege is a fact, you don’t understand America.
The comedian Chris Rock says it best. There’s not a white man in America who would trade places with him. And he’s rich.
It has not gone unnoticed that Trump has spoken out against the Mexicans who want to come to America for a better life. Against the Muslims. And now, against the black athlete. But he says nothing for days about the white men who marched under a Nazi flag in Charlottesville, except to remind us there were good people there.
And when he finally tried to say the right thing, not one of them was called an S-O-B or should be fired.
We have white men in America who wave the Nazi flag and the Confederate flag and he’s concerned about taking a knee because it disrespects this flag. We use that flag to sell mattresses and beer. We wear it as a swimsuit. We wrap our bald heads in a flag bandana and stick it in our pants. Because we disrespect that flag every day.
Maybe we all need to read the Constitution again. There has never been a better use of pen to paper. Our forefathers made freedom of speech the First Amendment. They listed ten and not one of them says you have to stand during the anthem. And I think those men respected the country they fought for and founded a great deal more than the self-proclaimed patriots who are simply hypocrites because they want to deny the basic freedom of this great country they supposedly value and cherish so much.