Less than a week after calling for a national boycott of the NFL due to the league's "outrageous mistreatment of Colin Kaepernick," Shaun King, senior justice writer for the New York Daily News, took to Twitter on Thursday to "fundamentally reject" Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie's recent comments on Kaepernick, claiming Lurie said "he wouldn't hire Colin because of his anthem protest."
"It's amazing the Eagles owner found it in his heart to have grace for a white player calling black folk [explicit]," King said, alluding to former Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper, who was fined in 2013 for his use of a racial slur. "Dear Eagles, your owner -- Jeffrey Lurie -- has absolutely no idea what he's talking about concerning Colin here."
The comments, most of which were linked to a column by Philly.com's Marcus Hayes, come a week after an Eagles press conference with Lurie in which the owner was asked by local media whether he would consider signing Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who knelt during pregame national anthems in 2016 to protest social injustice and has yet to find a new home in the NFL. King's comments were accompanied by a string of separate tweets defending Kaepernick's work in kids camps, donations to charity and conversations with law enforcement regarding police brutality.
His insinuation that Lurie said he would not sign Kaepernick because of the anthem protests, however, did not go unaddressed by the Eagles.
"Your recent claims are entirely unfair and inaccurate," the team's official account tweeted at King along with an "unedited transcript of what was said" during Lurie's Sept. 7 press conference.
In the transcript, not to mention video of the conference on the Eagles' website, Lurie never says he wouldn't sign Kaepernick, nor does he condemn any social activism that is accompanied by proactive community involvement. The owner even goes as far to say that "it can be misinterpreted that certain people are not showing respect" for the American "flag, for the anthem" when they protest social injustice.
And that shouldn't come as a surprise considering Lurie employs and supports, including in the very press conference King referenced, a player in Malcolm Jenkins who has and will continue to seek social reform through national-anthem demonstrations.
As Hayes noted in the Philly.com column that King cited, Lurie may have avoided a direct endorsement of Kaepernick's activism, which, admired or not, helped spark league-wide conversations of broader issues. And his decision at one point, when answering a separate question about Kaepernick, to reference the Eagles' background check of former quarterback Michael Vick, a convicted criminal, may indirectly have painted Kaepernick's protests as wrongful.
Never, however, as the Eagles informed King via Twitter, further noting that "we let the quotes speak for themselves," did Lurie suggest the team would not hire Kaepernick because of the quarterback's demonstrations. Never did he claim the Eagles franchise -- one that King might normally have been highlighting for its history of social activism and second-chance offers to players like Vick and Cooper -- would stand against efforts for equality. Especially amid praise for one of Lurie's own player activists in Jenkins.