The Washington Commanders, see, are trying to get a new stadium in D.C., which would end their 28-year exile in Landover, Md. Thing is, the proposed site is on federal land, which means the lease would have to be approved by Congress. And that means The Supreme Leader could rally his serfs in both houses to put the kibosh on the deal.
Which he threatened the other day to do if the Commanders don't restore their old nickname, the Redskins.
And if you're asking here "Why would the President of the United States care about a sports team's nickname?", you've clearly been in a coma for the last decade or so.
He cares because there's nothing he enjoys more than sticking his thumb in propriety's eye, and he deems no opportunity to do so beneath his office. Like any bully with a big hammer -- and he's got the biggest any bully ever had -- he's gonna wield it every chance he gets. He just can't help himself.
So, yeah, trying to blackmail an NFL team into bringing back an old and contentious identity sits squarely in his wheelhouse. And the more contentious the better.
Look. We could debate all day the provenance of the term "Redskins", and whether or not it demeans a people we've already demeaned enough in America's long history. Even the people in question are split on the matter.
Some would no doubt welcome The Supreme Leader's shakedown tactics to restore the old nickname; more believe it deserves its place in history's dustbin. It is, after all, 2025, not 1825. The primitive culture that gave birth to the term "Redskin" presumably is long gone, as are the brutal practices with which it unavoidably resonates.
Scalping the dead, and sometimes the living, for one. Also, in some perverse instances, skinning Native Americans to provide, um, clothing for the particularly degenerate. Yes, children, those things happened.
This is why "Redskins" is regarded as a pejorative by many Native Americans, along with the fact it often was used as such by those who subjugated them. It's why the Blob regards it as such, though as a white man my opinion counts for very little.
As does that of The Supreme Leader -- who's apparently never met an offense he wouldn't give if it involves those who aren't members of the rich white guy club.
That he's in a position to freely give that offense, and in fact enshrine it as national policy, is our misfortune. We're in the clutches of men and women who yearn for those halcyon days of the 1820s, or at least the 1890s.
Hence the systematic removal of black history exhibits in our national museums, using the slick con that they're "divisive." And the proposed re-christening of naval vessels named for, among others, Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall, Cesar Chavez and Medgar Evers.
And the attempted erasure of Native American culture enacted by the Indian schools of those aforementioned 1890s -- when children were taken from their homes, given white names and severely punished if they were caught speaking their native tongues instead of English.
And, OK, sure, we've wandered a good ways from nicknames for sports teams. But context is all, and the aforementioned forms the context here. And therefore the question asked at the top of this remains the nut of all this.
Why does the President of the United States care so much about this? Why would he care so much he'd blow up a stadium deal over it? Why is he so passionate about a word many regard as a racial slur?
I think we know the answer to that. Don't we?
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