ESPN analyst Mike Ditka said the Ferguson protests were a “shame” and that he was “embarrassed” for the St. Louis Rams players who held a “hands up, don’t shoot” mini-protest before their latest game, despite the fact they can’t prove that happened. Liberal ESPN host Keith Olbermann suggested "The evidence is only 50/50 the teenager made a similar gesture."
But The Washington Post ran Ditka’s comments under the Thursday headline “Protest by the Rams bewilders ESPN’s Ditka.” (The online headline is less tendentious.)
"It's a shame this thing has come to this," Ditka told the Chicago Sun-Times for his weekly feature column. "The shame of it is, I'm not sure they care about Michael Brown or anything else. This was a reason to protest and to go out and loot. Is this the way to celebrate the memory of Michael Brown? Is this an excuse to be lawless? Somebody has to tell me that. I don't understand it. I understand what the Rams' take on this was. I'm embarrassed for the players more than anything. They want to take a political stand on this? Well, there are a lot of other things that have happened in our society that people have not stood up and disagreed about.
"I wasn't in Ferguson. I don't know exactly what happened. But I know one thing: If we dismantle and limit the power of our policemen any more than we have already, then we're going to have a lot of problems in this country.
"What do you do if someone pulls a gun on you or is robbing a store and you stop them? I don't want to hear about this hands-up crap. That's not what happened. I don't know exactly what did happen, but I know that's not what happened. This policeman's life is ruined. Why? Because we have to break somebody down. Because we have to even out the game. I don't know. I don't get it. Maybe I'm just old fashioned."
This "old fashioned" viewpoint also matches what Republicans called "the silent majority" or the "Reagan Democrats," people who believed in the virtue of the police in the face of riots and unruly "civil disobedience" like laying down in the middle of the street.
