Redskins Hog heaven won't give an inch on the Washington Redskins team name. I admit to being recalcitrant on the subject. A publicist invited us to promote a story on a major publication about a contest for commercial artists on the next team name for Washington's football team.
Hog Heaven not only would not plug that story here. We won't even read it there. The Redskins already have a team name.
But I, Anthony Brown, am also a U.S. History buff who enjoys the story in history. So I couldn't resist reading Mike Tanier's post suggesting renaming the team the Washington Red Clouds.
NO, I absolutely do not buy into the suggestion to rename the team for the man, but Dakota leader Red Cloud was the most successful Native American general and diplomat in my opinion. It's a story worth repeating. So I am glad to plug and link Tanier's post, The Washington Red Clouds on his Sports on Earth blog.
Read it for the story and not for the suggestion.
Daniel Snyder did a smart thing to respond the controversy to Redskins fans rather than team name critics. The name Redskins is more about us than about native Americans anyway. We apply the term to the players and to ourselves and we certainly are not slurring ourselves.
If anything dishonored Redskins, it was the way the team carried themselves Sunday night against the Cowboys. It was embarrassing. And then to sit through that Bob Costas nag….
Oooooh! Bob Costas at halftime on "the Redskins nickname" controversy! Exciting! I WONDER which side of the debate he'll come down on!
— Steve Czaban (@czabe) October 13, 2013
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Thank God for FOX. (Words I never thought I would write.)
Hog Heaven has been slow to buy the comments that the name change movement is driven by the liberal media. I tend to follow that media, but vehemently disagree on this point. All liberals aren't for it, but FOX is the only media camp that challenges it.
That's to be expected. FOX jumped in because President Obama hinted he would consider a name change if he were president of the Redskins instead of the United States. FOX tends to knee-jerk the opposite if Obama said the sky was blue. They engaged my blogging friend Mike Richman, The Redskins Historian, for the counter argument.
FOX poo-poos political correctness and, you know, syuff like diversity and racial sensitivity, especially when carried to extremes. The extreme notion of the PC crowd is that we can't acknowledge race at all. It's too emotionally charged.
We will channel Hog Heaven contributor who wrote, "The accusers are guilty of their own accusation."
This current impulse about the team name is not about disparagement. One can argue with considerable, if disputed, historic evidence that redskin was not a slur and that team founder G.P. Marshall never intended it to be such. That's not the point of this controversy. The other side thinks it is insensitive to have any reference to race or color.
That's a 21st-Century political correctness applied to an 80-year-old team that wasn't around when Red Cloud roamed the West.
Meanwhile, Virginia tribes call out Obama on "Redskins" team name.
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