Kenner correct to protest against narcissism

Why shouldn’t a local government just do it to strike a blow against a culture of narcissism?

Last week, in a move that doesn’t appear to have its origins in publicity-seeking, Kenner Mayor Ben Zahn dispersed a memo to donors of apparel and equipment for the city to use in parks and recreation. It requires city approval of such items and bans outright anything from Nike.

While the letter doesn’t mention the event specifically, recently the company started a marketing campaign honoring the 30^th anniversary of its “Just Do It” slogan. This featured one of its representatives for the next several years, who will receive a reported tens of millions of dollars million for his trouble: Colin Kaepernick, an ex-professional football quarterback known for having one good season and a penchant for using the pregame playing of the National Anthem as a prop to air personal grievances against his country’s policies and political system.

The initial ad lauds Kaepernick, who has expressed support for the Castro regime in Cuba and worn socks depicting police officers as pigs, as a sort of rebel willing to stand up for his beliefs. After he began his Anthem protests, he subsequently had a nondescript season and declared himself a free agent for the 2017 campaign, only to find no takers.

Clearly on the athletic decline, it’s debatable whether he could have made a National Football League roster, but the negative publicity he brought to the league likely shut the door totally to continuing on the gridiron, with his becoming a marketing liability no team would wish to bear. But he’ll make starter’s pay now from the perception, as the advertising ploy tries to convince, that he gave up a career because of his beliefs that he would not yield in the face of persecution.

Poppycock. Forcing himself into a ritual event that signifies many things – the sacrificing of one’s life for his country and the representing of an indisputably superior set of human values and ideas, among other salutary sentiments – is the act first and foremost of a narcissist. He has many avenues by which to pursue his political agenda (which relies on dubious premises woefully short on facts) that don’t involve calling attention to himself by antagonizing stadium crowds and television viewers. He made himself the Westboro Baptist Church of the NFL.

Of course, both Nike and Kaepernick are in the business of making money, so if they think this arrangement will earn it, so be it. At the same time, Kenner under Zahn’s leadership doesn’t have to subsidize the mock heroism Nike peddles and half-baked ideology of somebody obviously not a brain surgeon.

Zahn’s directive can’t make donors stop giving Nike products to the city, but in its refusal to accept these, if they want to help youth and others in athletic pursuits, givers will stop buying such items and thereby negatively affect the company’s bottom line. It’s a perfectly valid expression of government policy (along the lines of the state’s refusal to do bond business with entities that encourage circumscribing legal Second Amendment rights) and if Kenner’s citizens don’t like it, they can vote Zahn out or pressure the City Council to change it.