I shall no longer refer to http://t.co/kifdJsH4BI as Slate. From now on they are shale. Hail REDSKINS
— Anthony Brown (@SkinsHogHeaven) August 8, 2013
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Slate.com, a Washington Post-owned web site covering legal and political stuff, changed its editorial policy today. It will no longer use "Redskins" when covering the Washington Redskins.
Pixels are cheaper than ink, so it's no great cost to Slate to use the clumsy Washington Washington Football Team instead of Redskins. Their parent company has more skin in the game. Even Slate acknowledged that a similar policy would be painful for The Post and new owner Steve Bezos.
I'm warning you, Steve. My Amazon account is gone if you touch "Redskins."
UPDATE: I have since been informed that The Post sale to Bezos did not include Slate. I like that laugh line so I'm keeping it.
Richard Nixon did not face impeachment until House Republicans concluded that he had to go. The Redskins will not change the team name until Redskins fans, the ones who spend money, agree the term must go. I gather that opponents of the name, like Slate, do not have skin in the game. It costs them nothing to tell other people, the owner and fans, how to spend their money.
Hog Heaven does not think the team should fight this fight alone. So we weigh in on the name controversy from the fan perspective. Here is the comment we left on the slate article.
_________________________
“Shrugs. Don't care.
“I do compliment you for properly presenting the word as "redskin" instead of the brand presentation "Redskins." Mr. Snyder's company owns the trademark rights. That gives him and only him the legal standing to use the brand to identify his product. The Redskins have been very successful as a brand identifier for football entertainment and only as football entertainment.
“Writers and their publishers who write that "Redskins," the brand, is a slur risk liability for diminishing brand value that, since 1967, has come to identify football. Even the Trademark Board and the U.S. District Court were careful to use the common noun redskin in the discussion.
“I do dispute your conclusion about the court cases. The Trademark Board itself found that there was as much evidence that redskin was NOT historically used as a slur as there was evidence that it was. They said they could not decide the merits of either argument, so they used other sources.
“In addition, the Trademark Board found that the word redskin had become extinct in language and cultural use by the mid-20th Century well before the football team registered the trademark.
“They essentially looked up the word in the dictionary and ruled that it might be considered a slur and invalidated the trademark.
“The U. S. Court would have none of it. While Judge Kollar-Kotelly reversed the ruling on a technicality, she also opined that the logic used by the trademark board on the issue itself was not sufficient to reverse trademark protection. The Trademark Board is surely aware of that on this second case.
“To lose trademark protection, the plaintiffs must prove that the team itself used the brand in a scandalous and derogatory manner to demean other people. The only thing I find scandalous has been the Redskins record since 1991. The only people they demean are them Cowboys … because The Redskins is a brand of a football team, and only a football team.”
Hail to the REDSKINS.
Read our other pieces on the name controversy. Click HERE.
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