Saturday, August 23, 2014

Weapon of Mass Distraction: More Ridiculous Redskins Team Name Hogwash


With the NFL season less than two weeks from the official opening games, the political circus over the  Washington Redskins team nickname is back in the news. After all, it isn’t as though there are more pressing issues like wars and rumors of wars, a dismal economy teetering on the brink of collapse, the militarizing of the American police, spiking food prices, rampant political corruption and any number of other problems. The political class - especially the worthless swine in the U.S. Congress who are on their latest taxpayer funded vacation -  see opportunity in pimping racism and identity politics because after all, it is an election year.

The newest front in the attack against the Redskins comes from the editorial page of the neocon flagship Washington Post. The paper has taken a break from shilling for the wars that keep the money flowing into the local economy to support the armies of worthless bureaucrats and other tax teat sucklers employed to proclaim that the paper’s editorial section would no longer use the term “Redskins” in team coverage.

This page has for many years urged the local football team to change its name. The term “Redskins,” we wrote in 1992, “is really pretty offensive.” The team owner then, Jack Kent Cooke, disagreed, and the owner now, Daniel M. Snyder, disagrees, too. But the matter seems clearer to us now than ever, and while we wait for the National Football League to catch up with thoughtful opinion and common decency, we have decided that, except when it is essential for clarity or effect, we will no longer use the slur ourselves. That’s the standard we apply to all offensive vocabulary, and the team name unquestionably offends not only many Native Americans but many other Americans, too.

How convenient the Washington Post is capitalizing on the raw sore of the national racial dogfight over events in Ferguson, Missouri to stir the pot. Hell, the WAPO is a for profit corporation and as such needs to be able to draw attention via page views and selling papers. It is also, after all, an election year. There will be no end to this stupidity and the war will be on between those who traffic in racial outrage, whether it be the co-called conservative talking heads on Fox etc. or the political correctness Nazis on the left. Neither of which ever let an opportunity to whip out the race-bait like shovels of bloody red meat to their particular consumers and acolytes in order to remain relevant and keep the money flowing in. Racial issues in America are a tragic and complex societal problem that only continue to worsen, only a part of it is due to systemic inequality and institutionalized racism and the trivializing of race issues by the agents of outrage is not only insulting but does nothing to address the real problems. 

Obama’s Democrats are about to get crushed at the polls come November 4th, and by sundown on the day after they will have been washed off of the streets and into the gutters like leftover vomit. They know it too. Obama is one of the worst presidents in U.S. history and his ratings are mirroring Newton’s Law of Gravity as they careen into the abyss. El Presidente,  in addition to being a thin-skinned narcissist, a fascist and an incompetent fool only continues to do damage to this feckless party. This being the case there is a good deal of politics in the ginned-up outrage over the Redskins team name. It energizes what remains of their base - anyone with any common sense who neither stupid nor willfully blind has become an independent and bolted the party. This leaves only the myriad of squabbling identity groups seeking government redress for long-running grievances. They will all of course be promptly shit on after their votes have been nailed down but that’s just the name of the game and they are gluttons for punishment.

The weeping and gnashing of teeth directed at the Washington Redskins previously included the U.S. Patent office stripping the trademark of the team name. Then a gaggle of Democrats lead by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to force the team to change names - no Republicans were asked to sign it.  More recently the sainted moral icon of the football world Tony Dungy (himself an anti-gay bigot) along with fellow analyst Phil Simms have announced that they will refuse to refer to the Redskins as the Redskins while on air. The pitchforks however are out for former NFL coach Mike Ditka who is always entertaining in a way that only Hockey Night in Canada's Don Cherry can be and has blamed the phony controversy on "politically correct idiots". Now as fantasy football drafts are taking place and participants in betting pools rushing to get their entries in the Washington Post editorial board chimes in add fuel to the fire. 

As for the actual team name, is it politically incorrect?  Sure, I guess it may be. But why only in an election cycle when cheap political points can be scored by charlatans like Harry Reid who is also inclined to make racial jabs on occasion? Do the descendants of Native Americans have every right to be offended? Well, I can't speak for them but I would think that having your ancestors slaughtered and their land stolen by John Wayne hammerhead prototypes under the pretense of Manifest Destiny would be a far more serious grievance than what the hell some football team calls itself. Especially when the team has used the name ever since relocating from Boston back in 1937 where it used to be called the Boston Redskins.

Good God - get a life people.  I don’t see Harry Reid and the other professional race-baiters whooping up the liberal lynch mobs to go after the Notre Dame Fighting Irish for that negative stereotype so this is all just more of the same politics of divisiveness that are used as a distraction while everything collapses.

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