2013 Point and Laugh at the taterskins thread

Started by SD, January 27, 2013, 10:41:43 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

SD

month late but a good start:
Quote
After being tasered in back and hit in head with champagne bottle, taterskins OT Trent Williams was given and passed two concussion tests.

Don Ho

I was at a function last night and this came up.  Halfway through the conversation I realized he was the dude that bitch slapped the Seahawk DB after the playoff loss. 

This took place at a pretty swanky club in Waikiki. 
"Well where does Jack Lord live, or Don Ho?  That's got to be a nice neighborhood"  Jack Singer(Nicholas Cage) in Honeymoon in Vegas.

ice grillin you

QuoteIt's an awkward fact of life in Washington, DC, that we are home to both the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and the Washington taterskins. One attempts to preserve the Native American cultures that weren't eradicated by conquest; the other is both a symbol and result of the same eradication. These two worlds collided this past week when the museum hosted a day-long symposium about Native American sports nicknames. In a packed auditorium, panelists and audience members took the local team to task, calling their name "ugly," "offensive" and "a racist slur." Former Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, the only Native American senator in US history, said from the stage, "If you want [your mascot] to be a savage—use your own picture." Not one person either in the audience or the crowd defended the use of "taterskin," because, as one fan of the team said to me, "it really is defending the indefensible."

Despite repeated requests from the museum, the taterskins refused to send anyone to make the case publicly that the name is anything other than a self-evident slur. Like their owner, the ham-fisted, rabbit-eared Dan Snyder, they celebrate the moniker only when no one is present to challenge them. Since purchasing the franchise in 1999, Snyder has maintained that the name "taterskins" was a "tribute," as former team Vice President Karl Swanson said, "derived from the Native American tradition for warriors to daub their bodies with red clay before battle." This is not an argument they felt confident making at the Smithsonian because the laughter would have cracked the Capitol dome. The team name was the brainchild not of an anthropologist who advised on the fierce honor of the "red-clay warriors" but of team founder, segregationist and Dixiecrat George Preston Marshall.

Senator Campbell said that he asks people, "How would you feel if the team was called the Washington Darkies?" George Preston Marshall would have felt euphoric because he adored minstrel shows and fetishized the confederacy. As Thomas G. Smith wrote in his book Showdown: JFK and the Integration of the Washington taterskins, when Marshall proposed marriage to his future wife Corrine, he did so "amidst fragrant honeysuckle while a group of African American performers [dressed like house-slave extras from Gone with the Wind] sang 'Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,'" a song that speaks lovingly of how slaves love to see affection between their "Massa and Missus." The taterskins were named for the minstrelsy Marshall adored and, as the southernmost team in the league at the time, to appeal to Dixie. They were also, surprise, the last team in the NFL to integrate.

If you know this background, it's risible to hear NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell say, "I think Dan Snyder and the organization have made it very clear that they are proud of that name and that heritage, and I think the fans are, too." There is nothing to be proud of in this "heritage," unless your tastes tend toward the antebellum South. In a league that's 70 percent African-American yet couldn't seem to find any coaches or executives of color to hire this off-season, the taterskins are also a reminder, as William Faulkner wrote, that "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

Despite this awful, seemingly entrenched history, there is change on the immediate horizon in the face and play of the team's star quarterback, Robert Griffin III. RGIII hasn't said a word about the team's name but his very presence represents the greatest threat to Marshall's legacy. Griffin is recovering from knee surgery after the finest statistical season of any rookie quarterback in the history of the game. The team won their division and, with the mercury-quick Griffin under center, also became must-see TV. Beyond just the swooning local sports writers, DC figures like Maureen Dowd, Marco Rubio, and President Obama all giggled with glee in RGIII's glow. If the 23-year-old wonder said tomorrow that the team should be called the Washington Cuddly Snuggles, it would happen. But even if RGIII never says a thing, the better this team gets and the closer they come to the Super Bowl, the more this name goes from a quietly uttered embarrassment to a full blown national conversation. Do you think the NFL and Roger Goodell, on top of answering questions about concussions, lawsuits and the dwindling number of black coaches, want to talk about anti-Native racism?

Even if Dan Snyder doesn't want it to happen, it's going to happen. As former taterskin Tre Johnson said, "It's an ethnically insensitive moniker that offends an entire race of displaced people. That should be reason enough to change it." It should be, but if you know Dan Snyder, you know it will take more. Maybe an RGIII shall lead us. Or maybe, as Curtis Mayfield advised about the very civil rights movement George Preston Marshall so vehemently opposed, we're just going to have to "keep on pushin." Either way, you might want to put your new RGIII jersey in mothballs because in the future the only place you'll find taterskins gear will be behind glass; maybe at an exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian.
i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

Tomahawk

No team is going to change their name because their QB says so.

General_Failure

Which is why we don't have the San Francisco Montana Shmontanas.

The man. The myth. The legend.

QB Eagles


Sgt PSN



Sgt PSN


Rome

Is your name dickhead because you look like a geriatric penis with ears.

Diomedes

He's got you there, Sassy.


The Washington Post isn't letting up on this name change subject, God Bless them.
There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." - Yosemite Park Ranger

MDS

the washington stillupfronts taterskins are ignorant of their intolerance?
Zero hour, Michael. It's the end of the line. I'm the firstborn. I'm sick of playing second fiddle. I'm always third in line for everything. I'm tired of finishing fourth. Being the fifth wheel. There are six things I'm mad about, and I'm taking over.

ice grillin you

QuoteThe collection of newspapers which have expressed opposition to the name 'taterskins' by omitting it from their publications are beginning to stack up.

The Kansas City Star – hometown paper to the Chiefs – made sports talk radio waves last summer when it explicitly laid out the reasons why it would no longer print the name, in a piece titled: "Star Policy on Washington NFL Team's Name."

Here's an excerpt from the Star's public editor on Sept. 24:

"I remain unconvinced by every argument I've ever heard that the name is not a racial epithet, plain and simple. And I'll even break my usual rule about commenting on issues outside The Star's journalism to say that I find it inconceivable that the NFL still allows such a patently offensive name and mascot to represent the league in 2012."

And now it seems they have help.

The Washington City Paper, DCist, and even select Washington Post writers have joined the Star in its uphill struggle against tradition.

"I understand people don't like it. Some people like the name, some people don't like it. Some people want it changed, some people don't," 106.7 the Fan's Danny Rouhier said Wednesday on Holden and Danny. "To me, an outlet that is responsible for covering the news, deciding as a policy that they're not going to say the name of the team is irresponsible."

"I don't even know if irresponsible is the right word, I just think it's flat out wrong," Holden Kushner said. "You're job as a journalist is to report the news. Now there's opinion columns. The Kansas City Star came out with a nice opinion column saying why they're not going to use the name anymore."

"The landscape of journalism has changed a lot," Kushner continue. "People take stands now. Things evolve. Things get reported that weren't reported, but I'm with you on this. The name of the team is the taterskins. You talk about the taterskins, you write the taterskins. You don't have to make yourself the center of the story when you do this."

"What you're doing is you're imitating kind of the way our social phenomenon are going now with social media," Danny said. "Everybody gets to be a critic. Everybody gets their own little Facebook page so everybody's value is the same online. So a newspaper outlet is reflecting whenever John Q public is like, 'I hate the name taterskins. I'm not saying it anymore on my Facebook wall.'"

As talks of a possible name change continue it will grow increasingly more difficult for the taterskins themselves to ignore the issue, leaving only one thing certain: at some point we'll all to take a stand.
i can take a phrase thats rarely heard...flip it....now its a daily word

igy gettin it done like warrick

im the board pharmacist....always one step above yous

Sgt PSN


BigEd76