During his meteoric media career, Michael Strahan has faced little or no criticism. And now, out of the blue, Strahan finds himself caught up in a red, white, and blue controversy over (drum roll, please) whether he put his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem at Fox’s annual Veteran’s Day visit to a U.S. military installation.
It seems weird, overblown, and/or contrived. The argument is that Strahan was protesting in some way by not putting his hand in his chest.
If Strahan has something to protest, he has plenty of avenues to make his views known. Why stay silent until the moment the national anthem is being played as part of a Veteran’s Day celebration?
On Tuesday night, Strahan addressed the situation on Instagram.
“I have nothing to protest,” Strahan said. “I have no statement to be made. The only statement that should be made and that I want to make is that I love the military, I’ve always loved the military, and I will always love the military.”
Strahan’s father was a Major in the U.S. Army, and Strahan grew up on a military base.
The Hall of Famer said he didn’t put his hand on his chest because he was “caught up in the moment” of watching “all these young sailors” who had made the commitment to serving the nation and securing our freedoms.
Even if Strahan was protesting something/anything, he has the right to do it. Our American freedoms include the freedom to do something that isn’t popular. Along with the freedom to refuse to engage in a coordinated display of compulsory mass patriotism.
Of course, everyone else has the freedom to criticize anyone who fails to do it. But the criticism of Strahan is misplaced.
And it’s dangerous. Really, is that what we’re becoming? So sensitive to any sign of dissent that we’re searching for it when it’s not even there, ready to point and screech like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
The anthem controversy helps Strahan, in one specific way. It draws some attention away from the fact that, when he came home to a group of media outside his door, Strahan grabbed a reporter’s phone and threw it in a bush. (For those keeping score, that’s the second time in 11 days that a former NFL player took someone’s phone and did something with it.)
In his video, Strahan said of the phone incident that he’s “not proud of the way that I handled that whole situation.”
Regardless, the reporter shouldn’t have been there because this really shouldn’t have been a story. We wouldn’t have even mentioned it if Strahan hadn’t addressed it himself.
But he did. And we did. And we’ll see whether Strahan has anything to say about it on the next edition of Fox NFL Sunday.
