Sunday, June 22, 2014

Navajo: Redskins' name is American

  Once you start banning names, you're on the road to speech control of all kinds. As Bradbury wrote in Fahrenheit 451 (the temperature at which books burn), one group gets offended so we stop something to appease them. Another group gets offended, so we stop doing something else to appease them. Eventually all that's left is stupid movies about farts and pooping.
  Fortunately there are some sensible people left in the world and not surprisingly, several of them happen to be WW2 veterans who saw a lot worse than this. Fox:
Still, he said he would endorse the name if asked, and the televised appearance in which three of the Indians wore Redskins jackets spoke for itself.
"We didn't have that in mind but that is undoubtedly what we did do," Hawthorne said when asked if he was intending to send a statement with the appearance. "My opinion is that's a name that not only the team should keep, but that's a name that's American."
  You'll note in the article, one aggrieved Indian woman claims the Code Talkers are being abused and are too uninformed to know they are, even though Native Americans first started using the name themselves.
  Imagine this woman--whatever she's been through in her life--condescending to a WW2 code talker who's served his country so admirably and fearlessly:
Jacqueline Pata, head of the National Congress of American Indians, called the appearance "a political play rather than a heartfelt recognition of the Code Talkers." Pata, a member of the Tlingit Tribe of Alaska, said she reveres the Code Talkers for the work they have done but added that people often fail to recognize that the origins of the term redskin date to a period when Indians faced efforts to annihilate their culture.
  But in today's hierarchy, since she's a squaw, I suppose she's entitled to disparage old Code Talkers. 
  Heh.

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