Four weeks into the NFL season, not only is the COLIN KAEPERNICK national anthem protest still in effect, it has ignited discussion around the league and throughout the sports world—in some cases, causing longstanding gestures that had gone unnoticed to come to the surface. Veteran NBA forward DAVID WEST has quietly lined up a couple feet behind his teammates during the national anthem for several years and several teams, but few people noticed until this weekend. The longtime community activist, who is concerned about "so many" issues that go "a lot deeper" than what Kaepernick has been talking about, says, "Protest is an individual thing. It’s based on your own personal conviction"... JOAKIM NOAH refused to join his NEW YORK KNICKS teammates at a dinner with WEST POINT cadets and a retired ARMY colonel on Thursday, which was little noticed outside the team until the next day when a reporter asked him what he thought of the colonel's speech. Noah, a lifelong pacifist, was forthcoming in explaining his opposition to "kids killing kids" and how the military environment makes him uncomfortable. Noah didn't skip the dinner because of Kaepernick, but it's doubtful it would have been as big a news story in any other year. It's not only a gesture that's spreading, but the very idea that athletes can—and maybe should—use their voices in the public arena. Also making the leap from small gesture to big news is the BALTIMORE ORIOLES' decision to play WOODY GUTHRIE's "THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND" during the seventh inning stretch once a week, which they have been doing all season. The ORIOLES, like all MLB teams, have played IRVING BERLIN's "GOD BLESS AMERICA" at least once a week since the SEPT. 11 attacks, but the Guthrie song—a defiant lyric written as an answer song to Berlin's tune—is a pointed message from the team's ownership. VICTORY JOURNAL's NATHANIEL FRIEDMAN ponders the meaning of LEBRON JAMES supporting Kaepernick's protest while declining to join him. James has been more than willing to speak up for political causes in the recent past, but Friedman argues that the meaning of protest is different in the relatively progressive NBA than in the relatively conservative NFL. "When James stands during the anthem," he writes, "it’s not a full-throated endorsement of what America is. It’s a statement about what he believes America could be"... Oh, and LeBron is endorsing HILLARY CLINTON, the candidate who "truly understands the struggles of an AKRON child born into poverty"... VIN SCULLY wasn't the only major broadcaster to step away from baseball this weekend... BILL SIMMONS says there has been "some thawing" of the frosty relationship between him and ESPN... There has been no such thawing between PATRIOTS fans like this one and ESPN... But our long national nightmare is really, truly over... RIP SUZANNE MITCHELL, who was to the DALLAS COWBOYS cheerleaders what BILL WALSH was to the WEST COAST OFFENSE, and SCOTTISH boxer MIKE TOWELL, who died a day after taking a beating in the ring in GLASGOW.