A volunteer fire chief has resigned from his job in suburban Pittsburgh after drawing fire for a racist Facebook post published after the Steelers stayed off the field during the playing of the national anthem Sunday.
Paul Smith resigned Tuesday as chief of the Muse Volunteer Fire Company in Cecil Township, Pennsylvania, in the wake of using the N-word to describe Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, local media reported.
“Tomlin just added himself to the list of no good [expletive],” Mr. Smith wrote Sunday. “Yes I said it.”
The fire chief’s comment came in response to the Steelers’ decision to stay off the field while the “Star Spangled Banner” played prior to the start of Sunday’s road game against the Chicago Bears and gained national attention after going viral.
The Cecil Township Board of Supervisors issued a statement Tuesday afternoon saying Mr. Smith was off the job “effective immediately,” and the ousted fire chief told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette afterwards that he had resigned.
“The media dragged my fire company and township into this as well as my family,” he told the newspaper Tuesday.
The Steelers made the unusual decision to stay off the field during the national anthem Sunday after President Trump ripped professional athletes who kneel during the song as a form of protesting police brutality and racial injustice.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ’Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’” Mr. Trump said during a Friday rally in Alabama.
Steelers president Art Rooney II said in a statement Tuesday that the team had stayed off the field when the anthem played Sunday in order to avoid making “political statements” and that their behavior wasn’t meant to be interpreted as a boycott.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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