Three Old Miami Dolphins Shun President

This past Tuesday the President received the 1972 Miami Dolphins team at the White House East Room as they together celebrated forty years of being the only team to go completely undefeated in a National Football League season...throughout that year's regular season, divisional and conference playoffs, and culminating with a Super Bowl victory.   Hall of Fame Dolphin greats Bob Griese, Larry Little, and Larry Csonka were among those there, as well as legendary coach Don Shula.  The current Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross footed the bill to bring them to Washington, which I thought was a nice gesture on his part.  But three of those '72 Dolphins players spurned the event because they said they were politically opposed to the sitting President.  Jim Langer, Bob Kuechenberg, and Manny Fernandez not only didn't attend, but they had to throw in some political trash talk into something that was a nonpolitical visit to their elected Head of State.  It could have been Republican President Romney instead of Democratic President Obama for all the difference it makes: in my opinion these three players, who obviously were under no compulsion from any one side to attend, are lacking in basic civics education and appreciation.  We live in a representative democracy, and as such, will sometimes collectively elect people into leadership positions with whom we, as individuals, have political differences.  Still, we should respect the PROCESS and the POSITION to honor the results of those elections and thereby respect whoever happens to be holding office at a particular time.  I wonder, had Romney been in there and held this commemoration, whether some of the more liberal members of that '72 Dolphins team would have shunned him.  There's no way of knowing for sure, but if that had happened it would have been just as wrong as what these three did.  For the record, by the way, owner Ross happens to be a proud Republican who clearly gets it when it comes to truly appreciating what it means to live in a democratic republic...as well as being a class act.  Too bad that some don't...