MAGA cap are banned from Arizona Cardinals stadium

Let me pretend I’m Denis Lévesque for a few minutes: I can’t believe it!

An Arizona woman named Susan went to see a Coyotes Cardinals game on Sunday. It was the Cards‘ first local game of the season, played as usual at State Farm Stadium. Susan has been attending her local football team’s games as a season ticket holder for some 30 years.

Except this time, she almost couldn’t get into the stadium. But why? Because she was wearing a red cap that read Make America Great Again (MAGA), Donald Trump’s popular political slogan.

A security guard simply told her she couldn’t enter with such a cap.

Susan was with her husband, and for the first time since she showed up at the games, an employee told her she had to throw her cap in the garbage in order to attend the game, otherwise she wouldn’t have access to the stadium. I invite you to watch the report from 12News, a television station based in Phoenix.

The @AZCardinals security forced a woman to remove her MAGA hat before entering the stadium and claimed the hat violated policies.

She’s been going to the Cardinals games for 3 decades pic.twitter.com/tyXLjbGwxM

– Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 19, 2024

As she went through the normal process of anyone wishing to enter State Farm Stadium, Susan heard someone yell at her thatshe couldn’t wear that hat here.

She thought it was a joke. Have we really come to the point where we ban people because of their political ideology… in a democratic system?

But no, it wasn’t a joke. She was told she couldn’t wear a piece of clothing with a political message on it to Cardinals games. Apparently, it went against the organization’s policies.

Susan hesitated, but decided to throw her cap away and not make a big deal about it. In hindsight, she regrets it a little and admits that perhaps she should have acted differently.

Did it really violate Cardinals and/or stadium policy to wear a red cap extolling America? The answer is no. There’s no such thing in the State Farm Stadium bylaws.

Officially, obscene or indecent clothing is prohibited, as are risqué or inappropriate items.

Someone did judge on the day of the event that the MAGA cap fell into one of those categories, but the Cardinals confirmed to 12News that MAGA caps are allowed inside the stadium and that a member of the security team obviously misinterpreted the rules: political posters and flags are prohibited, but not clothing.

The Cardinals organization made a point of apologizing to Susan, but she continues to believe that the whole thing was created by a security guard who simply didn’t like Donald Trump. Who had a bias, to use her words.

It should be noted that Arizona, long considered a Republican state, is now a swing state, i.e. a state with the possibility of tilting the outcome of the US presidential election.

Let me ask you a question: if Susan had been wearing a Kamala Harris hat, would she have been able to get into the stadium? To ask the question is to answer it.

More and more, we’re living in a society where freedom of expression is being trampled underfoot. Frankly, I’m no fan of Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but I have no problem with anyone who is. That’s what freedom of expression and (true) freedom of thought/speech are all about.

Jonathan Marchessault was vilified for “daring” to support Éric Duhaime and Jack Eichel made headlines last week for his support of Donald Trump. If you only knew how much I don’t give a damn who a particular person votes for…

There are plenty of people out there extolling the virtues of diversity in our right-thinking society… repeating that it must be respected and extolled… sh*ting on the heads of those who aren’t 100% in favor of diversity, everywhere, all the time…

But when someone doesn’t think or act like them, they stigmatize and isolate them.

Do they really love diversity that much? Diversity is only good if it joins you and comforts you in your beliefs, right?

Let’s stop shutting ourselves away in our microcosm full of like-minded people and open up. Let’s talk to each other, with respect…

And stop just wanting to look good. Let’s be more tolerant of others. Let’s be better people. For real, not just on the surface…