Nike celebrated Colin Kaepernick as a social-justice folk hero with its \u201cBelieve in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything\u201d ad campaign, but apparently the slogan doesn\u2019t apply to the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
After positioning itself as an unabashed champion of Mr. Kaepernick\u2019s free-speech rights, Nike has been conspicuously silent on the uproar roiling the NBA, saying nothing about China\u2019s decision to punish the Houston Rockets after general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for the protesters.<\/p>\n
In fact, Nike stores in China quietly pulled their Houston Rockets merchandise off the shelves last week, according to Reuters, an indication that the sports apparel giant has already made the decision to protect its bottom line rather than the consistency of its \u201cspeak truth to power\u201d message.<\/p>\n
The difference in Nike\u2019s approach has not gone unnoticed. Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican, tweeted he was \u201cstill waiting for @Nike & their stable of \u2018woke\u2019 social-justice warrior\/athletes to speak out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nike\u2019s low profile also comes in stark contrast to its decision in July to yank shoes featuring the Betsy Ross flag after Mr. Kaepernick reportedly complained that the 13-star image was offensive.<\/p>\n
With a few exceptions, however, most of the blowback has been directed at the NBA and, more recently, Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James, who unleashed a social-media outcry by telling reporters Monday that Morey \u201cwasn\u2019t educated on the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
source:washingtontimes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nike celebrated Colin Kaepernick as a social-justice folk hero with its \u201cBelieve in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything\u201d ad campaign, but apparently the slogan doesn\u2019t apply to the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. After positioning itself as an unabashed champion of Mr. Kaepernick\u2019s free-speech rights, Nike has been conspicuously silent on the uproar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":12660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6409],"tags":[10387,335,11996,11606,5321,3883,10483,5205,10419,1821,3449,7123,12791,12899,3283,5390,11171,6944,3448,10041,146,594],"class_list":["post-12659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-campaign","tag-colin-kaepernick","tag-crackdown","tag-democracy","tag-florida","tag-hong-kong","tag-houston","tag-july","tag-justice","tag-kong","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles","tag-manager","tag-marco-rubio","tag-nba","tag-nike","tag-protesters","tag-republican","tag-sen-marco-rubio","tag-speech","tag-truth","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51664,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12659\/revisions\/51664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}