Given the latest attacks today on democracy from some of the top dogs in our government, you might well have missed a small bit of news coming out of Cleveland. The city’s baseball team is finally giving up its excremental mascot known as Chief Wahoo. Not until next year. But, still, better late than never. In light of this, for tonight’s Night Owls, I’ve excerpted a diary I wrote on the subject in 2016 when Cleveland earned a berth at the World Series: Thumbs up to Cleveland for going to the World Series, but send that f'n Chief Wahoo to oblivion:
[...] For some Americans, however, the fun is going to be at least partly spoiled by the Cleveland team’s stubborn defiance in continuing to display their vile racist logo, a caricature of an American Indian, Little Red Sambo Chief Wahoo. Although Cleveland adopted the name of the team 101 years ago, a cartoonish depiction of an “Indian” mascot with yellow skin emerged more than 80 years ago. This was reengineered in the late ‘40s and soon everybody was calling him Chief Wahoo. In 1951, the caricature was tweaked again, this time with red skin. Since then, it’s been rejiggered only slightly.
As usual, those who say there’s nothing wrong with the caricature, from the owner to the fans who show up at the games painted in garish red face and woo-woo-whooping, it’s supposedly all about respect and honor of America’s Native peoples. This would be laughable if it weren’t so moronic. Chief Wahoo epitomizes the disrespect engendered by Indian mascots and logos. If the series goes the full seven games, it will overlap with November’s Native American Heritage Month. What a fabulous way to kick that off.
As usual, there will be those who say American Indians and others who think the Chief Wahoo logo and the Washington R*dsk*ns nickname ought to be dumped in a landfill should focus on Indian-related issues that “really matter.” Uh huh. As if we don’t already multitask. Where are those critics when it comes to actually raising such issues—like the horrendous rate of cops killing Indians, or the continuing violation of treaties that are supposed to have been the law of the land for at least the past 135 years? They’re AWOL.
And, as usual, enterprising PR operators will trot out some Indian or pretendian to claim that the name and logo don’t bother him and that all the protesters are just looking for attention. Throughout American history, the protesters have been called “renegades” and the go-alongs have been called “the good Indians.” [...]
The claim that Indians were being honored by having Chief Wahoo representing us clashes with how Louis Sockalexis—the first actual Indian (Penobscot) on the Cleveland team when the name was chosen in 1915—was treated: Fans threw garbage at him when he stepped up to bat. They war-whooped. That's the real legacy.
And today, we have similar behavior. Fans war-whooping, red-facing, and sometimes doing the full stereotyped bit, showing up in faux buckskins and faux headdresses, the likes of which no real Indian who lived in or near Cleveland ever wore.
Those people in 1915 had an excuse. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which used real Indians to depict fake Indians, had only ended a couple of years before. Geronimo and Red Cloud, once fierce leaders of the indigenous resistance, had died in 1909, but many lesser known war chiefs were still alive. And 1915 was the year the deeply racist Birth of a Nation, shown in the White House to the reported delight of Woodrow Wilson, helped resurrect the Ku Klux Klan.
But what’s the excuse for this offensive behavior a century later? [...]
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QUOTATION
“Change is freedom, change is life. It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed. There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.”
~Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1994)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2008—Shifting Focus on Domestic Spying:
In just about a week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the legality of President Bush's domestic spying program. While we've (rightfully) been focused on the Supreme Court debate, the media has already begun to sweep this scandal as well under the rug. Bust this excerpt from an ABC News poll article:
NSA -- A better result for Bush, noted above, is the apparent lack of traction for critics of the warrantless NSA wiretaps. A clear majority now says such wiretaps are acceptable, 56 percent, compared with 43 percent who call them unacceptable. That compares with a closer 51 to 47 percent split earlier this month.
Most polls have approval of the program hovering around 50%-55%. FISA and FISA courts and warrants and probable cause are complicated subjects, so it's understandable that many Americans view this issue as a simple false dichotomy between civil liberties and security. Karl Rove and the Republicans have already planted the seed in the media and the talking points have taken firm root: this may or may not be outside the law, but don't we want to spy on terrorists?
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin prepares us for the imminent flood of SOTU "pivot" garbage, the latest wingnut conspiracy theory & the raw reality of Larry Nassar’s crimes. A 50,000-ft. view of the collapse of everything. And some push-back on the Dutch intel story.
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