Manhattanville College's Lady Valiants defeated Kings Point last night in the first round of the Skyline Conferemce Tournament, 67-51. More importantly, however, the win keeps Manhattanville's season, and senior forward Toni Smith's protest against the American flag, alive. The New York Times Bill Pennington was on the scene last night.
"I never meant this to be a public statement," said Smith, a 21-year-old sociology major raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side. "I did it for my own self-respect and conscience. My stance is not a personal attack on Vietnam veterans or any war veterans. I know the flag represents people who have died for this country and I support them. But the flag means different things to everyone."A lot of people blindly stand up and salute the flag, but I feel that blindly facing the flag hurts more people. There are a lot of inequities in this country, and these are issues that needed to be acknowledged. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and our priorities are elsewhere."
Manhattanville plays again at home on Thursday is a second round tournament game.
UPDATE: A thank you goes to Off Wing pal Charles Kuffner, who pointed us to this Houston Chronicle piece by John Lopez:
For better and worse, politics and sports always have mixed. Sports heroes always have reflected the political pulse of a generation, or at least used the athletic stage to take a stand.But it wasn't until this 5-10 rebounding specialist, who previously was anything but a strong political voice or sports hero, turned her head away from the flag that the war came home.
Home to national sports pages and sportscasts. Home to a small bedroom community in New York, which just as well could have been one in California, North Dakota or Texas.
Home to center court, where no one in the building has to agree with her protest -- and some of us indeed consider it a disgrace -- but no one should take away her right to do so.
That's what veterans like Jerry Kiley fought for.
And once again, I feel the need to point out that nobody is questioning Smith's right to protest. It's the content and manner of her protest that is both wrongheaded and corrosive -- and that would be the case whether America were at war or not.
I think it's also instructive to note, now that some national attention has been given to Smith, that she has changed her tune ever so slightly. Instead of talking about the impending war against Iraq, she instead talked in terms of social inequality that many others have all dealt with before, but without showing disrespect for our symbols of national unity.
When I look back at the 1960s, I can't help but think about Bobby Kennedy, Gene McCarthy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Each in their own way, they challenged America to take a look at itself in the mirror, and make a commitment to change the way it did business.
But when they did it, they didn't burn American flags -- unlike many of their compatriots on the Left in the 1960s. They didn't show disrespect for the unifying symbols of the nation either. It's this distiction, and not the fact that she is exercising her constitutional right to protest, that is raising the ire of folks all around the nation.
UPDATE: I should point out, that it was Long Island-based Newsday that first broke this story back on February 12. Here's a link to Eric Boland's story on last night's game.
