"Hail To The TBD", Cont'd.

"We'll never change the name. It's that simple. NEVER — you can use caps." -- Washington football team owner Dan "Little Danny" Snyder in 2013.

Today the Washington football team is announcing that it is ("you can use caps") "RETIRING" IT'S RACIST NAME AND LOGO, after years of resistance from current owner Dan "Little Danny" Snyder, one of the most disliked owners in sports. The team is expected to announce its new nickname later, the hold up due to apparent trademark issues (Warriors? Like Golden State?).

What changed Snyder's mind was the jingling of coin that sponsors like FedEx (which pays naming rights for their stadium), Nike, PepsiCo and others were going to withhold if the name weren't changed. Major retailers like Amazon, Walmart and Target announced last week that they were removing the team's gear from their online sites and stores.

Snyder didn't respond out of a sense of decency or civic duty, he responded after sponsor money was going to be withheld from his greedy mitts. He's still as unlikeable as he always was.

Re-Defining A Slur

The owner of Washington's football team, short-fingered money grubber Dan "Li'l Danny" Snyder, is doing his cynical best to tamp down calls for a change in his team's racially offensive name.  He's set up a "foundation" to spread bribes hush money resources to Native American tribes, and hired some very toxic characters (e.g., Rethugs Frank Luntz and Ari Fleischer) to push a massive PR campaign to defend the team's name.

Part of the PR campaign is to deny the term "redskins" is offensive in any way, and Li'l Danny's leading the charge in revising the definition of the slur.  Here he was yesterday in an ESPN.com interview:

"A Redskin is a football player. A Redskin is our fans. The Washington Redskins fan base represents honor, represents respect, represents pride. Hopefully winning."

Not surprisingly,  Li'l Danny's defining the term not as it has been used pejoratively for over 100 years, and is defined in the dictionary, but strictly in reference to his football team and fans.   So here's the test that we know Li'l Danny won't take:  go to a convention or large gathering of Native Americans, and use the term "redskins" exclusively when addressing them as a group or individually, and see if they think you're "honoring" or "respecting" them.  Go ahead.

BONUS:  Once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle sports columnist Mike Wise had a column yesterday about an aspect of the team's "heritage and history" that Li'l Danny would like to gloss over:

In a Roanoke Times editorial last month, House Delegate David I. Ramadan (R-Loudoun) summed up his fellow Virginia officeholders’ passion for keeping the name: “It’s no mistake that members of this newfound caucus come from around the commonwealth. For generations, the [R-words] have been Virginia’s team, even the South’s team.” 

The South’s team. 

That’s precisely what George Preston Marshall called his faux-Indian franchise. It’s the same reason the original owner who named the team was the last to integrate his roster in 1962, 16 years after the NFL’s color barrier had been broken. And that came only after the Kennedy administration threatened to prohibit Marshall’s team from playing on federal land. 

This is the part of “Our shared heritage and history” that never made it into Snyder’s impassioned, keep-the-name letter last fall to fans. Beyond the Fun Bunch, Darrell Green, Art Monk and the rest, this is unavoidably also part of this franchise’s past. 

And the further south the owner and his team retreat — the more stubborn, bunker-down mentality takes over as proponents of changing the name grow — the more the symmetry grows with some of their Commonwealth neighbors.  (our emphasis)

QOTD: "Hail To The TBD"

“'To say that the use of the term ‘Redskins’ is well-intentioned or that it is not meant to be objectionable sidesteps the real issue. This is not a term fashioned by American Indians. The nickname was assigned to them, just as the pejorative designation ‘darkies’ was once imposed on African American slaves. That was wrong then; this is wrong now. That the usage is common and innocently repeated out of habit makes it no less of an insensitive or insulting remark to those who are on the receiving end. We can do better.'

That is what we wrote in March 1992 when we endorsed an effort by the D.C. Council to convince Washington’s football franchise to change its name.  [snip]

Now, finally, belatedly, there are grounds for wary optimism that we all may soon be able to call the team by its name — a new one that is devoid of hurt and insult, that all Washingtonians will be able to proudly embrace. [Team owner] Mr. Snyder announced on Friday that the team will undertake a 'thorough review' of the team’s name.  [snip]

Sports have a wonderful capacity to bring people and communities together. A change in the name of the Washington football team offers exciting new opportunities. As we wrote back in 1992, 'We can do better.'” -- Editorial in the Washington Post.

Despite pressure from major corporations like FedEx and Nike to change the team's name, we're skeptical that the intransigent owner Dan "Little Danny" Snyder will go with a change this year. That said, he dreams of building a new stadium in Washington, DC, but has been told that unless the team's name changes, that's a show stopper. Time will tell.

(photo: Indigenous Americans protest Washington team's name. Flickr)