Saturday, July 30, 2016

Today in tone deafness

Or, "Two Incidents That Certain People Will Surely Decry As Political Correctness Run Amok, Because Decrying Political Correctness Run Amok Has Become The New Political Correctness."

One, a Texas A&M slideshow put together by a couple football assistants that included a parody version of the school fight song teleported, apparently, from the 1950s. Really, gentlemen? "Put down your dishtowel and take off your gloves"? "No more Lysol, no more Cascade"?

Head football coach Kevin Sumlin immediately slapped down the people responsible, on account of the fact women got out of the kitchen decades ago. I know, there's a certain sub-species of male that longs to go back to those days -- Barefoot, pregnant and bakin' cookies, that's how we like our women, by God! -- but that sub-species is knee-deep in the tar pits with the rest of the dinosaurs.

Pssst.  Hey, guys. It's 2016. Maybe you heard about it.

Which brings to our second adventure in tone deafness.

It seems a new junior hockey team in Erie, Pa., decided to call itself the "Lake Erie Warriors," which was fine as far it went, except that someone decided to take it a step further. So they introduced this as the team logo.

Seriously, people?

Yeah, there's nothing racist at all about that. I mean, look how fierce looks! What a proud, noble image of Native Americans! After all, they were all screaming savages, right?

The backlash, thankfully, was immediate and overwhelming. So the club not only yanked the logo, it ditched "Warrriors" for the more inoffensive "Gulls."

Which, to be honest, does seem like an overreaction. Ditching the logo would have been sufficient. Again, it was like something out of the 1950s, those golden days when you could insult racial minorities and women to your heart's content (and more than just insult them), and nobody called you on it.

Ah, the good old days.

No comments:

Post a Comment