Hola, amigos. It’s been a while but between my busy season at work and the time that goes into raising Baby Bob my blogging time took a major hit. Over the summer I blogged about the “controversy” regarding the team mascot for the NFL’s Washington Redskins. I put the word controversy in quotes, because outside of a handful of leftists in the media and the Permanent Victimhood Industry nobody really cares about this issue. No wait, I was wrong. After I started writing this post NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell weighed in:
”If we are offending one person, we need to be listening,” Goodell said Wednesday in an interview with 106.7 The Fan, ”and making sure that we’re doing the right things to try to address that.”
Actually Roger, if you give in to one demand of these parasites they’ll be back next week with two more. And then next week with five more. I’m hoping that he’s smart enough to only be throwing this out as a PR stunt to placate some fools, but we’ll see. So with the serious issues facing us today you may be wondering why I would choose to write about such a minor story. Twice. Like other posts I’ve written there’s more beneath the surface. One of the hazards of blogging is that if you procrastinate too long on a good topic somebody smarter than you writes on it. This almost happened when National Review’s Andrew Johnson wrote about other potentially offensive mascots, but luckily he stopped short of the point I was looking to make. He points out other mascots that could offend some because of how they cater to stereotypes – warriors of northern European descent, hillbillies, criminals (Hitmen, Pirates), and of course, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
If you haven’t already click on Johnson’s link and scroll through – he provides images of the logos or pictures for each of these offensive mascots. Do you notice a common thread, or more specifically, what’s missing from them? None of them are part of the leftist trans-race-ethncity-gender victimhood cottage industry. You don’t see kooky Irish Studies professors throwing out anti-American bile from the protection of their tenure, you won’t find “Hillbilly Sensitivity Training” being forced onto a public figure who makes an obnoxious remark about a character on Duck Dynasty, nor will you ever have to endure rants by some self righteous sportscasters about why the Hitmen are a mascot of a different era and need to go. Why is that?
A problem in this country goes to our abandoning the “Melting Pot” principle of us accepting people of any culture who wanted to eventually become Americans to the “Salad Bowl” of retaining your old identity over accepting a new one as an American. Even worse, what we have been seeing since the 60’s has been the left’s efforts to divide and maintain certain groups in a state of permanent victimhood. We saw this silo mentality on full display in the 2012 Presidential election when people who would otherwise be considered intelligent ignored every major issue where the president has failed and instead voted on whatever petty grievances were targeted at them in President Obama’s successful “divide and hate” campaign.
And of course, there are the Native American Indians. While it’s hard not to feel some sympathy for them, conquered people have existed since the start of time, and the Indians weren’t exactly pacifists prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Unfortunately, our efforts to help the Indians have trapped them in a cycle of poverty rather than allow them to grow into part of American society while still beiong able to retain their heritage as other Americans have. At the end of the day, the Redskins name isn’t about being offensive – it’s about the fact that there are people who can make money off of maintaining a class of victims.
Going back to Roger Goodell’s comment, would it be too much to ask that he take into consideration at how offended I am that we have to listen to these nimrods?
Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
