Getting Offended on Behalf of Other People (Redskins)

George Marshall was given the choice of hiring black players or having his team get kicked out of their stadium. Snyder will probably end up in a similar situation.

Three years. Tops.

Still curious.

You had me at hello. :stuck_out_tongue:

Sure.

I’m asking for specifics. What tactics fall under “making his life difficult?” Protests outside games? Disrupting a kickoff return by running on the field with a banner? Egging his car? Writing letters to the advertisers who buy ad space at the stadium? Pursuing further legal action to unregister his federal trademark rights? Kidnapping a family member and mailing a body part per day back to him? Distributing leaflets in local supermarkets on game day?

Mostly, just call him names on the Internet.

Yes, that certainly puts a crimp in his daily life.

Well, I’m also refraining from buying any Redskins merchandise or attending any Redskin games.

I mean, I’d be doing that no matter what, because I hate football, but in this particular case I mean it really hard.

Joking aside, though, don’t all these major sports franchises vacuum up a shit ton of public funds? Nothing wrong with attaching a few strings to that.

Well, sure.

Except that generally, the process goes: we want to keep Local Sports Team here, so we offer various perks. Assuming those perks came with conditions that Dan Snyder didn’t like, he can relocate the team to one of the other two jurisdictions in the area.

Or did you mean to simply retroactively add some conditions?

[QUOTE=Fotheringay-Phipps]

Otherwise it’s like saying you can avoid the problem of dying in a green car crash by not driving green cars “and if you can’t solve the problem of dying in other colored cars, well you can’t solve all the problems but you should at least solve some”.

[/quote]

No, that’s a ridiculously inappropriate analogy. What I’m saying is more along the lines of “You can avoid dying in a 120mph car crash by not driving at 120 mph, which is per se risky and unnecessary in highway driving anyway. Of course, that doesn’t solve the problem of dying in lower-speed car crashes, but just because we can’t solve all the problems doesn’t mean we shouldn’t solve this one.”

There’s no need in any ordinary circumstances to drive 120mph on the highway: it’s an avoidable and unacceptable risk. The fact that other modes of driving are still not 100% safe, even if you’re not going 120, doesn’t mean that it’s pointless to avoid doing 120.

Likewise, there’s no need to use current human ethnonyms to identify sports teams. Identifying sports teams with existing or recent human ethnic groups is an avoidable and unnecessary potential source of offense. The fact that other instances of giving and taking offense concerning ethnic slurs are still going to occur in other contexts doesn’t mean that it’s pointless to avoid using ethnic slurs (or even any ethnonyms) as sports team names.

He may have trouble finding another city that is happy to be associated with the controversy, though.

This is a tangent, but slavery is still a booming business in parts of the world - the top two countries involved are India and China.

Just so you know.

typical liberal obfuscation; you knew full well that I meant in this country, given that my support and citing of popular support for Redskins was equated to popular support for slavery in the US back 200 years ago and this Redskins thing is going on here, not in Somalia.

You said

It is not my fault, nor is it the fault of “liberals”, that you did not express yourself in a coherent manner. I responded directly to what you actually wrote, not what you may have meant but did not say. And you may have also overlooked in your furious frothing the fact that I characterized my comment as a digression anyway.

But perhaps you can take some comfort in noting that I’m not claiming that your apparent challenges in reading and writing clearly are typical of all conservatives.

I was a modern-day slave in America

It’s possible.

But the DC area is somewhat unique in that the “Washington” Redskins have played in DC itself, and in Maryland, and Virginia made a strong bid to get them to relocate in Northern Virginia. So against the burning desire to right wrongs perpetuated by a phrase that 90% of the Native American population is sanguine towards, there is a strong motive to capture a local cash generation cow.

So if I had to predict, I’d say that the likelihood of Dan being stymied as you imagine is very small.

Do you – or anyone reading – care to offer a specific prediction about how long it will be before Dan is forced by this righteous indignation to change the name?

I personally, as I said before, have no expectation that Snyder will ever be “forced” in any way to change the team name. That’s because:

  1. As ethnic slurs go, “redskin” is a fairly mild and non-shocking one, and unless some swarm of internet garbage trolls decides to make “redskin” their new “cuck”, it will not be popularly perceived as significantly more shocking and offensive in the future than it is now. So public opposition to the name is going to remain more on the level of eye-rolling distaste than fiery revolt.

  2. Snyder’s got enough problems with his management of his team causing widespread fan discontent already. He can’t really afford to lose the solidarity and support generated among many of the remaining fans by the warm fuzzies of imagining that they’re a courageous bastion of resistance to tyrannical “political correctness”.

My prediction, which is worth every penny you’re paying for it, is that the name will be changed without fanfare during some future ownership transfer or relocation. Many of the abovementioned “anti-PC” brigade will pout and stamp their feet a bit about it, and then everybody will just move on.

Maybe. Except these sports franchise generally end up costing cities more money than they bring in, which some people are finally getting wise to. Add to that the ethnic slur thing, and the public outrage you dismiss might be enough to stop a ballot initiative to bring the team in to a new city.

Not particularly, no.

I’m curious what your point is. You don’t seem to be discussing the morality of the name, the legality of the trademark dispute, or the underlying rationales for anything. It seems you’re just saying “Nyaahhh Nyahhh, it’s not going to change”.

“Forced by this righteous indignation” I can’t speak to. But I am personally confident the name will change within the next ten years. If we’re still around in a decade* I’ll fly out and buy you a beer either way.

(*That started out as a joke, but it’s the same joke I’d have made in 1999, and we’re still here so…yeah.)