Staying seated is freedom too

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A Vietnam veteran smacks a young man in the back of the head at Wrigley Field because he stays seated during the anthem — even though nobody in the US is required to stand, and Bob Chavez says so himself afterwards: "We fight for the rights of the people, and that's one of his rights." What the video doesn't show, Chavez told reporters: later in the same game the man he had hit bought him a beer, they talked, they apologised to each other, they shook hands, and when security came to throw him out it was the young guy of all people who waved them off. Of course only the slap went viral; the fact that the whole thing had been settled that same evening didn't make the news until two days later — by which point the internet had long been arguing about something that no longer existed.

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