Can we (BLEEEEEEEP) stop honoring the military now?

You're only proving what I said in the first place, you stupid jackass.

You can go stand in the corner now that you've seen what aligns with you, Mr. Sunshine.

 

Certainly you don't peg the blame on Cruz and Cruz alone, or even the Republicans. Even Reid and Pelosi have had a chance to "share the wealth". Have they? Nope.
Big difference between ENTITLEMENTS for lazy people who don't want to work and military who have volunteered to leave their comfort zones (or maybe the poor economy) to serve and happen to be maimed in doing so.

 

Hope this isn't a D_B, but I didn't see any discussion about the recent report that the U.S. military has been paying the NFL to salute the troops - to the tune of $5.4 million over the past three years. This seemed an appropriate thread on which to post the story.

The Pentagon pays the NFL millions to honor veterans at games - Business Insider

I've been saying for a long time that the military salutes have felt more like marketing than an actual form of honoring our service members, but I admittedly didn't realize it was marketing by the military. I always assumed it was the NFL (and other sports leagues) wrapping itself in the flag, not the military wrapping itself in the shield.

 

Good lord ..nobody does tax dollar waste like the defense department. And here naïve ole me thought the NFL was doing those tributes purely out of the goodness of its heart.

The military using tax money to bribe private industry to praise the military ...hell, there's not all that many steps between that maneuver and fascist propaganda tactics.

 

The military does have a recruiting budget. Part of that is marketing and paying for advertising, which would include things like stadium signage and allowing for a few displays set up on the stadium grounds.
I agree the facade of "honoring the troops" when it's actually a commercial for both sides can be nauseating, but I don't see that this is some sort of scandal.
The Jets got $377,500 over a four-year span from the New Jersey National Guard. That's about $94,000 a year (and $9,400 per game), and other teams were around the same (anywhere from $60,000 to $250,000 per year) according to the breakdown:

Which NFL teams got your federal tax dollars?

So, to reach a few million people when you take into account TV and in-person exposure, while building brand recognition in their target demographic through repeated viewings, our military "wasted" about as much money as they would on any other ad buy -- and probably far, far less when you do the weekly breakdown. No idea how effective it is. That's for some Pentagon study that costs 10 times more than this advertising did to figure out. It just doesn't seem like that much to me when you really break it down and take the market into account.

 

In terms of effectiveness, it's probably the most effective and cost efficient marketing they could do. I think it rubs people the wrong way because of the underhanded nature of it. I doubt anyone would bat an eye at whatever DOD spends on producing and airing commercials, but when you see those, you know that you are seeing an advertisement.

As a nation, I think we've been conditioned that propaganda is a bad thing - we typically associate it with communist or fascist dictatorships - and, as Stoney noted, this isn't terribly different.

I'm also kind of assuming the troops weren't aware the DOD was paying the NFL to honor them, so I imagine that could take some of the shine off the experience for them. It was never truly an acknowledgment of their service by the NFL and the 80,000 people in attendance, it was just a marketing ploy. Maybe it doesn't change anything for them, but as an outsider looking in, I imagine I'd be upset to be used in that manner, unless I knew in advance that the NFL needed to be paid to honor me.

 

I'm sorry, but there's a mile wide difference between this and that. This is inherently dishonest and intentionally misleading, that is not. When a person sees a recruitment advertisement or video he knows its an ad and that the military itself is responsible for it being there, nobody's trying to hide the source from him. Same for when he hears praise for the military coming from a recruiter.

But essentially bribing private industry to conduct ceremonies "honoring" the military--while pretending they're doing it on their own without disclosing that the military itself is behind it--involves a whole different level of deceit and strikes me as dowright creepy when you think about where this sort of practice could potentially lead.

 

They should have the military promote Draft Kings at NFL games. Have some paratroopers drop in with a fantasy football lineup.

 

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