NFL squashed Colin Kaepernick-inspired Super Bowl ad featuring animals taking a knee, PETA claims - msnNOW

Fragile Football League?

© Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo, file FILE - In this Oct. 2, 2016, file photo, from left, San Francisco 49ers outside linebacker Eli Harold, quarterback Colin Kaepernick and safety Eric Reid kneel during the national anthem before an NFL football game against the Dallas Cowboys in Santa Clara, Calif. There's an exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta, not far from the Super Bowl stadium, dedicated to Tommie Smith and his courageous stand for social justice at the 1968 Olympics. Talk about symmetry. Smith raised a fist, Colin Kaepernick took a knee, and both paid an enormous price for doing the right thing. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

One of the world’s largest sports organizations squashed an animated Super Bowl commercial featuring a variety of animals “taking a knee" just as Colin Kaepernick did before he was blacklisted, PETA claimed on Friday.

“The National Football League (NFL) apparently found our new Colin Kaepernick–inspired ad — with its message of inclusion and respect — too daring and pressured FOX to snub our commercial,” the animals rights group said in a statement.

The minute-long ad shows a bee, a horse, a pig, a bear and several other animals kneeling as a hummed version of the “The Star Spangled Banner” plays in the background. It ends with a bald eagle doing the same before the phrase, “Respect is the right of every living being,” appears on the screen.

PETA said the video aims to challenge speciesism, “a supremacist worldview that allows humans to disrespect other living, feeling beings and to treat their interests as unimportant.

“Our patriotic Super Bowl spot envisions an America in which no sentient being is oppressed because of how they look, where they were born, who they love, or what species they are,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said in a statement. “It sends a message of kindness — one that the NFL should embrace, not silence.”

The organization did not offer any evidence that the NFL pressured Fox to reject the commercial. Neither Fox nor the NFL returned a request for comment Friday afternoon.

If the allegation is true, it would not be the first time the league has blocked an ad from appearing during the Super Bowl.

In 2018, the NFL blocked an ad by a veterans group that was seeking to condemn players who were kneeling during the national anthem. The video featured the phrase, “Please Stand,” and asked for donations to the American Veterans organization.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said at the time that the game program was not a place for political statements.

“The NFL has long supported the military and veterans and will again salute our service members in the Super Bowl with memorable on-field moments that will be televised as part of the game,” he said.

Kaepernick’s peaceful demonstrations — a protest against police brutality and racial inequality in the U.S. — were seen as widely controversial and led him to become a free agent in 2017.

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