If conservatives were smart they’d ignore players who kneel during the anthem.
When conservatives whine about players who kneel and call for them to be ‘fired’ only benefits and advances the protesters’ cause.
Exactly. In this case Kaepernick had been quietly sitting out the anthem, in private, and making no big deal of it. It was some wag reporter that snapped his picture and took it to milk a story out of the gullibles, because that reporter knew there were enough easily-cowed spineless zombies whose objective in life seems to be to do what they're told without question.
Which is a sleazy thing for a reporter who's supposed to be picking up football insights to do, but the fact remains it was that element of media that started inventing a "story", not Colin Kaepernick. Had that sleazy media not gone that route, OR had the gullible zombies simply declined to take the bait and collectively said, "fuck that, what's happening with the pass defense?", this story would not exist and Colin Kaepernick would still be sitting in silence through a national anthem that most fans weren't even aware was being played at the game at all, until they were ordered by media to freak out about a who-cares non-story that has nothing to do with football.
That the unwashed masses were too dim to see they were being baited by media goes hand in hand with their inability to distinguish DoD pimped patriotism displays from football. It's the same Dim. And the story is as fake as the bribed fake-patriotism charades.