Actor and rare Hollywood conservative James Woods has a message for San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick — the American flag doesn’t need you to stand up for it.
“Don’t tarnish our flag by standing,” the outspoken 69-year-old Once Upon a Time in America star challenged Kaepernick on Twitter. “Just stay where you choose to be, with your worthless ass in the mud.”
Kaepernick created a firestorm Friday night when he refused to stand up for the National Anthem ahead of a pre-season game.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color,” the quarterback later explained. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Kaepernick later said he would continue to sit through the National Anthem at games until he feels that there is “significant change” and that the American flag “represents what it’s supposed to represent.”
The quarterback’s move elicited strong reaction from fans, who began filming themselves burning his jerseys, and from high up places like the White House and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Some, like Woods, have called for a boycott of the quarterback.
“If we really boycotted all of the #SF games and they fired this #dirtbag, people might think twice about behaving like this,” Woods wrote earlier this week in one of several tweets calling for a boycott.
Woods wasn’t the only actor to weigh in on the debate over Kaepernick’s move.
“Oh, f*ck yeah,” actor Charlie Sheen told a TMZ cameraman this week when asked whether he supports the quarterback’s decision, though he did concede that he sees “both sides.”
Filmmaker Spike Lee defended Kaepernick’s move as being in the defiant tradition of other black sports stars like Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson.
“I support him,” Lee said in an interview on CNN Monday. “It’s in that tradition of black athletes standing up, saying I’m not using their platform, saying I’m not happy with the way black people, people of color are being treated.”
Meanwhile, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office in California has invited Kaepernick to experience their basic police training sessions and to have an “open dialogue” with police officers about their experiences.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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