Other good points in here too.

Trump 7, Eagles 0

Voters beaten down by the politicizing of everything voted for the guy who makes a mockery of all of it.

The press says Mr. Trump is pushing the battle of the national anthem because it plays to his base. I suppose it does. But here’s what galls even non-Trumpians about this kneeling kerfuffle: We live in a world soaking in partisan politics. Then one day you wake up ready to relax with NFL Sunday, and you discover that “The Star-Spangled Banner” has become totally politicized. Any normal person, including liberals who won’t admit it, would have a three-word reaction to this spectacle, and the first two words begin with “w” and “t.” (tho I have no idea what words he's alluding to. -UFNY)

So what else is new? Today, if someone has a grievance or beef, first thing they do is look for something to attach it to—the anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, 19th-century American fiction, Mom’s apple pie—anything that will draw the world’s attention, meaning the attention of the viral plague called social media.

I got an email this week from San Francisco flogging “Artists Get Political Ahead of Midterms.” How? By embedding political messages in everyday objects, such as bus kiosks, hand towels, bedspreads and toilets.

Then, even now, the people who voted for Hillary still claim to be shocked and stunned that an electorate beaten down by the politicization of everything in life voted for the guy who makes a mockery of all that.

Worth noting is that there were no serious college commencement protests this year. Is this progress? Maybe. Or maybe the answer is that in the social-media era, when no thought lasts long, the commencement shout-downs and anthem kneelings burn themselves out as the protest zeitgeist moves on to find yet another platform.

But there’s one protest platform that won’t burn off: Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is a showman, who has been playing the media like a Stradivarius his whole life. Now he’s got Twitter , his own loud calliope.

In 2016, his Republican primary opponents didn’t recognize that we are living in an age of bread and circuses, an age Donald Trump didn’t create but into which he inserted his own circus. Curiosity seekers filled the tent and loved the show.

The sophisticates in the media thought they could beat Donald Trump at this game by burying him under waves of negative publicity. But he feeds off of it, just as he turned the Philadelphia Eagles’ White House no-show into a display of patriotic music, with the maestro at the center.

Now, fantastically, some Democrats are complaining that they can’t get their message out (the tax cut didn’t work, Medicare for all) because Donald Trump has blotted out the media sun. Gee whiz, whose fault is that?

The eclipse won’t end. The media has turned the Trump presidency into a phenomenon of constant self-absorption—their self-absorption in this one person. Donald Trump has become the biggest balloon in a political Macy’s parade of modern media’s own creation. They could let go of the ropes. But they won’t.

There is a staggering amount of ceremonial activities at the White House.  Visits by winning sports teams are just a tiny part, and like all the rest, are normally part of our culture.

The difference is how “bringing people together to recognize moments” breaks down when you have an utterly devisive POS as President.