Don't You Dare Express a View Not in Lockstep With the Anti-Arizona Immigration Law Folks! Or Else They'll Show Up in Droves to Protest You at Work!

That's a lesson being learned tonight by LA Lakers head basketball coach Phil Jackson, who in comments last week had the unmitigated gall to suggest that NBA teams should not be in the business of requiring their players to wear uniforms containing political messages (like the ones the Phoenix Suns recently wore to purportedly protest the new Arizona immigration law). OH MY GOD Phil! What were you possibly thinking! So the folks who are against the law have organized a large protest outside tonight's Lakers game in LA (link to story at bottom).

For the record, Jackson's opinion is not only entirely reasonable, but it happens to be right. Just imagine the uproar from the far left if some NBA team tried to force its players to wear a uniform trumpeting support for the Arizona law? And such a mandate would be equally wrong. NBA teams are not government entities, and so there is no First Amendment issue here. But doesn't the thought of a business or employer forcing employees to adopt and sport certain political views on a uniform (regardless of what the individual employee's own views might be) strike you as entirely overbearing, inappropriate and over-the-top? That's certainly not an employer for whom I would ever want to work. And that's precisely the point at which Jackson's recent comments were, at their core, getting. He certainly did not say, "This is a wonderful law and we need to support it!," although you wouldn't know that to see this ridiculous LA protest tonight.

Final thought: How about the snide little comment at the end of the linked story by USA Today writer Tom Weir? He closes by stating, "If [Jackson] had followed his own advice on not mixing politics and sports, there wouldn't be a protest scheduled tonight." In other words, Weir feels that Jackson should have either expressed an unqualified opposition to the Arizona law or else should have completely kept his mouth shut, and since he failed to do that, he's just gettin' what he deserved! Nice objectivity, there, Weir. That's as pathetic as this LA protest tonight, by the way.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2010/05/phil-jackson-riles-las-latino-community-protest-set-tonight/1