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The on-line editor of Slate, David Plotz, posted an article last Thursday declaring their intention to no longer print the full name of Washington DC's professional football team, making it clear they find the word Redskins offensive and out of step in modern America. They join other prominent publications that are doing the same thing.
For decades, American Indian activists and others have been asking, urging, and haranguing the Washington Redskins to ditch their nickname, calling it a racist slur and an insult to Indians. They have collected historical and cultural examples of the use of redskin as a pejorative and twice sued to void the Redskins trademark, arguing that the name cannot be legally protected because it’s a slur. (A ruling on the second suit is expected soon; the first failed for technical reasons.) A group in the House of Representatives also recently introduced a bill to void the trademark. The team has been criticized from every different direction, by every kind of person. More than 20 years ago, Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser, no politically correct squish, urged the team to abandon the name. Today, the mayor of Washington, D.C.—the mayor!—goes out of his way to avoid saying the team’s name.
Why, then, has nothing changed? Because the choice of the team’s name belongs to one person, Washington owner Daniel Snyder. He has brushed off the controversy with arm waves at “tradition,” “competitiveness,” and “honor.” He recently told USA Today, “We’ll never change the name. It’s that simple. NEVER—you can use caps.” Earlier this year, some Redskins flunky was assigned the job of locating high school teams around the country called Redskins, and found 70 of them, which proved very little except that the Redskins are capable of spreading a bad example to the young. (A Google search of “Redskins” “nickname” and “high school” turns up story after story of schools dropping the nickname.) And this May, the team pathetically trotted out a guy named Chief Dodson to explain that his people were “quite honored” by the Redskins name. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell cited Dodson’s support in a letter to the Congressional Native American Caucus, apparently not realizing that the supposedly Redskins-loving Dodson wasn’t a real chief.
Another one of my go-to sites,
Mother Jones joined
Slate on Friday. I couldn't help but laugh at this tongue-in-cheek quip in Ian Gordon's post acknowledging that sports fans are unlikely to notice this change on
Mother Jones
For those of you who come to Mother Jones for your breaking NFL news…never mind, I can't even.
Now, I'm no football fan. The extent of my knowledge of the game pretty much begins and ends with the fact I know it to be played with a pointy-ended ball. I am, however, a great fan of understanding right from wrong and affording basic respect to people. The word redskin has, like other similar words, been recognized as a pejorative against the very people it is used to reference. There is nothing standing in the way of dropping the use of it as a nickname for a football team hailing from the capital of our nation. Nothing except the hubris and insensitivity of the egomaniacal owner who has decided this is the hill upon which he intends to plant his stubborn and sad little flag.
Now on to Tops!
TOP PHOTOS
August 10, 2013
Enjoy jotter's wonderful PictureQuilt™ below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. Have fun, Kossacks!
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