Against that backdrop, I looked at the photo my friend posted on my Facebook timeline, and I tweeted out a little joke, poking at those who claim that sports and politics never go together. I did so by sarcastically adopting the voice of one of the many “stick to sports” people
we’ve mocked around here many, many times:
View image on Twitter
"Will you keep politics out of sports, please. We like sports to be politics-free"
Initially most of my followers and people who saw it realized I was trolling the “stick to sports” people and nodding to the many things I’ve written over the years about the often political nature of patriotic displays.
A few hours later, though, some conservative people who are not familiar with all of the stuff I’ve written about this sort of thing over the years saw it and believed that I was denigrating the American Flag and claiming that the Braves were conducting a political propaganda exercise on Friday night. By mid-morning that began to snowball and since then I’ve been flooded with literally thousands of people calling me a commie, saying my tweet was treasonous and telling me that if I don’t like this country I can get the hell out right now. One person said I should be burned at the stake. Another said I should be hanged.
One guy even told me he hopes I get cancer.