The Right’s “Patriotic Correctness” Double Standard

Plus: Where “equity” goes awry.

Jeff Landry testifies during the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing on the Missouri v. Biden case challenging the administrations violation of the First Amendment by directing social media companies to censor and suppress Americans' free speech, in Rayburn Building on Thursday, March 30, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

1. Stand Before Zod

As Kim Mulkey’s LSU Tigers prepared for the most-watched women’s college basketball game in history Monday night, they proceeded through the same pregame routine that had served the defending champs so well for the past several years: The lady Tigers come onto the court for warmups and a shootaround, then they headed back to the locker room around twelve minutes before tipoff for final game preparations and returned from the tunnel for the starting lineups.

This routine means that the team is not on court for the singing of the national anthem.

“If you ever go to an actual LSU game you’ll see that they’re never on the court for the anthem. It’s that simple. I’ve covered them for 3 years & they’ve never been,” tweeted Chessa Bouche from Baton Rouge’s BRProud News.

It’s unclear to me whether this pregame ritual has been a plot by Coach Mulkey to protect herself from political criticism or something else. Maybe a few years ago she had a player who planned to protest the anthem and she didn’t want to deal with it. Or maybe she is just the insane type-A competitor that the recent Washington Post profile made her out to be and she wants to take every last minute to ensure her team is ready.

But the truth behind Mulkey’s motivations really isn’t the point for her critics. 

On Monday, the grifters who exist to ruin American life and make every human decision a micro-battle in their neverending cultural forever war, finally noticed this and decided to engage in some dog whistle attacks on the “dirty debutantes” of Baton Rouge. 

OutKick, a sports website run by America’s wrongest man Clay Travis, began the outrage cycle by contrasting the LSU absence during the anthem with the way the Iowa players “stayed and held hands.” LibsofTikTok and the other usual suspects piled on for the retweets.

But this low-calorie outrage fest extended beyond social media. The governor of my adopted home state weighed in, saying that he believes “student athletes [should] be present for the national anthem or risk their athletic scholarship.” (Losing a scholarship over this? Insane!) The next day, his muppet-faced mug was on Fox News, where he proceeded to dunk on the young women who brought a national championship and an economic boost to his state in the days after their hard-fought defeat. 

What an asshole.

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2. Patriotic Correctness

But here’s the thing. There have been similar assholes from time immemorial—men of privilege with no actual talent who want to tear down people who worked hard to build themselves up.

It’s annoying, for sure, but it’s life.

But in this case, there is something even more pernicious at play. The same