{"id":8290,"date":"2026-09-07T07:35:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T07:35:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8290"},"modified":"2026-09-07T07:35:54","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T07:35:54","slug":"woke-colin-kaepernicks-time-is-past-but-he-wont-go-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8290","title":{"rendered":"Woke Colin Kaepernick’s time is past \u2014 but he won’t go away"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A decade later, Colin Kaepernick is as tiresome as ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To mark the 10-year anniversary of his kneeling during the national anthem, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback is out with a new memoir, \u201cThe Perilous Fight.\u201d (Get it?)<\/p>\n

Read more Andrew Garfield faces backlash after telling billionaires to be \u2018scared\u2019 of his new movie<\/a><\/p>\n

In an interview with NBC News in advance of the book\u2019s release, which he clearly imagines as part of a vindication tour, he proved himself as committed to woke racial politics as he was at the height of his career.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He told NBC that his protests were about fighting \u201cpolice killing black folks\u201d and \u201csystemic oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that he was thinking \u2014 not very modestly \u2014 about the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King while he took a knee.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly true that Kaepernick sacrificed his career to his protests, although he was a marginal player by the end.<\/p>\n

In his prime, Kaepernick was a top-notch athlete and electric performer.<\/p>\n

No one can take his exemplary 2012 and 2013 seasons away from him: In one playoff game in 2012, he passed for 263 yards and ran for 181, a single-game record for rushing by an NFL quarterback.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He couldn\u2019t maintain this level of performance, though.<\/p>\n

In 2015 he lost his starting job to journeyman Blaine Gabbert.<\/p>\n

He won it back for a time in 2016, although he got benched during one game after throwing for all of four yards.<\/p>\n

The 49ers went 1-10 when he started, and by one metric, he ranked 23rd out of 30 qualifying quarterbacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So he was hardly the GOAT; instead he was the once-very-good, now-mediocre. <\/p>\n

Then there was the issue that his style of play didn\u2019t fit in most offensive schemes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Layer on top of this the circus he\u2019d bring to town with his kneeling, and it\u2019s understandable that teams didn\u2019t find him an alluring proposition in 2017 when he was a free agent.<\/p>\n

There were myriad options available as back-up quarterbacks who weren\u2019t notorious for disrespecting the national anthem immediately prior to games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

None of this would have mattered if Kaepernick had maintained his 2012-level of play; in that hypothetical, teams would have signed him even if he started to do the black power salute during huddles.<\/p>\n

Read more Armed intruder lunges at Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton during event, injuring multiple people<\/a><\/p>\n

Kaepernick has now worked himself into a position where he\u2019s compared NFL players to enslaved people (in an absurd Netflix documentary), and he\u2019s bitter that he isn\u2019t numbered among them as a 38-year-old who hasn\u2019t played in 10 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019s the substance of his advocacy.<\/p>\n

The high-water mark for Kaepernick\u2019s anti-police worldview came in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, when the NFL basically apologized for not listening to his supposed wisdom and the police were put on their back foot in many cities around the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The result was an increase in violent crime that, of course, disproportionately victimized black people.<\/p>\n

The country has now recovered from this idiocy \u2014 based the lie that the police indiscriminately kill black people \u2014 and is much safer for the people that Kaepernick purports to care most about.<\/p>\n

If we ever go anywhere near his preferred policy of abolishing the police and prisons, we\u2019d instantly create the worst crime wave in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

Kaepernick is sometimes compared to Muhammad Ali, the legendary boxer who sacrificed part of his career by claiming\u00a0conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n

Ali was hated for a time, but his true greatness as a boxer, his incandescent charisma and his outsized place in the culture allowed him to transcend that political controversy and become a beloved American figure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That is not going to happen to Colin Kaepernick, whose claim to fame is kneeling on the sidelines during some NFL games.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

He\u2019s very dismissive of the enduring change wrought in the NFL by his protests and the tumult after 2020.<\/p>\n

The league has painted the words \u201cEnd Racism\u201d in end zones.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Kaepernick rightly considers these pointless messages performative \u2014 but so was his scorn for the anthem of his own country a decade ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more Second Burning Man festivalgoer found dead at campsite<\/a><\/p>\n

X: @RichLowry<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A decade after he took a knee during the national anthem, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is as tiresome \u2014 and as committed to woke racial politics \u2014 as ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-rich-lowry"],"yoast_head":"\nWoke Colin Kaepernick's time is past \u2014 but he won't go away - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=8290\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Woke Colin Kaepernick's time is past \u2014 but he won't go away - 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