O'Donnell: Kaepernick protest takes on new meaning this week

FOUR YEARS AGO, two young Americans of color protested police brutality in very different ways.

Colin Kaepernick was the more famous and visually enduring.

And his sideline kneeling took on all new irony this week given the horrific, inhuman event that set parts of Minneapolis burning.

Micah Johnson had his 15 minutes - actually, closer to five hours - but at what tragic cost.

He was the decorated Afghan War veteran - age 25 - who went over the edge and ambushed and killed five Dallas police officers in July 2016.

In a brutal bit of cosmic convergence, Johnson's rampage happened within AK-74 distance of the site of the game-changing murder of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

It came moments after an organized protest in downtown Dallas had been held to scream rage at the extrajudicial deaths of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in suburban Minneapolis during encounters with police.

Post-mortems revealed Johnson to have once been a mainstream, reasonably adjusted young man from a "good" household.

He worked at a Jimmy John's after high school, before answering his nation's call.

But wartime in Afghanistan, a struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and psychotropic drugs prescribed at a veterans hospital to cope with PTSD changed him.

The rising instances of police-on-color brutality - many of them laid so starkly bare in the new age of instant citizen video and viral social media - were the final push.

Johnson died while cornered in the building of a junior college blocks from Dealey Plaza.

His military savvy prevented a police SWAT team from storming his strategic position.

So Dallas Chief David Brown - now Chicago's superintendent of police - ordered in a robot laden with a pound of C-4 explosive.

And the solitary, deeply troubling protest of the shooter was over.

Kaepernick offered America a more passive warning.

It cost him his NFL career. It cost him millions of dollars.

But it didn't cost him his soul.

He also offered America the suggestion of the first steps toward peaceful solution in a nation so markedly more diverse, desensitized and polarized than ever before.

The thick blue line in Minneapolis Monday night showed that all of the right people weren't paying attention.

When will America ever learn?

When will it ever learn?

STREET-BEATIN': Renewed rumblings of significant changes at NBCSCH. It has been an extremely difficult initial 17 months for regional boss Kevin Cross. (The outlet's languid try at an afternoon roundtable needs major new energy - seals unsuccessfully trying to balance beach balls on their snouts would be an upgrade.) ...

Fox is eyeballing both Joel Klatt and Brock Huard as NFL add-ons. (That's as exciting as hearing Joe Biden is set on Tim Kaine as his vice-presidential nominee.) ...

Rumors have been rife for months that struggling WBBM-Channel 2 News is going to eliminate all substantive sportscasts. This week's separation with ambient Megan Mawicke does nothing to knock away that notion. ...

Calls for an appropriate, lasting regional memorial commemorating the life and work of Bob Frisk are once again growing. (Last winter, after a strong reminder, ahem, one self-absorbed former high school administrator emailed: "You don't really think Bob Frisk was more important than the coaches and educators around here, do you?") ...

From a gopher hole in Henderson, Nevada, Jeff Fogle of Vegas Stats and Info (vsin.com) is attempting to debunk the theory that bad bullpens give Korean baseball bettors too many unhappy endings. (Just don't chase the KT Wyverns or Doosan Bears.) ...

Speaking of the KBO, as could be expected, ESPN is demolishing almost any allure to the game telecasts with far too many junk graphics cluttering the screen. (Maybe they could add outtakes from Netflix's disappointing new Steve Carell vehicle "Space Force.") ...

And in memory of George Floyd, this isn't a weekend to strain toward wit or whimsy in closing a trifling sports & media column. It is a time for the Lincoln Memorial to once again be crying.

• Jim O'Donnell's Sports & Media column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at jimodonnelldh@yahoo.com.