It's Mighty White of the Redskins to Agree That Blackskins' Lives Matter

Left unsaid in the First Amendment is an American citizen's right to be oblivious.

Good thing, too, because it's just mind-boggling how often that right is exercised.

It goes to the extreme when the words used lose their meaning. They're just said in reference to something and not a thought is given to their origin.

Or how casually they're used.

 

Back in 1920s and 1930s, when the NFL was just kinda there, a couple of teams rented out baseball stadiums for their games. In order to make it easier for fans to know where they played, a some took the same nicknames as their baseball landlords.

The New York Giants, for example, played in the Polo Grounds and even after the baseball team moved to San Francisco, it's why some traditionalists still call their gridiron counterparts the Football Giants even though there's now no reason for confusion.

 

Meanwhile, up in Boston, their NFL team played in the original home of baseball's Braves and thus took that as their nickname.

When the baseball team left for Milwaukee, the football team made a deal with the Red Sox to play at Fenway Park. They also took the opportunity to give themselves a unique moniker that would still give a hint as to where their home games would be.

At the same time, the club wanted to be sure fans knew they were not a new franchise but the established NFL club with a sound history. Ergo, owner George Preston Marshall did a bitta melding:

Red Sox + Braves = Redskins

Still, Boston sports fans had other things to do, so in 1937, the team moved to the nation's capital.

 

Well, it did in the 1930s, when the only cowboys in Dallas rode horses and injuns were still savages.

It hasn't really aged well, either.

Ironically, though, it did give us Chief Zee:

 

 

Believe it or not, Redskins may not be the nation's most controversial nickname. That honor's gotta go to the teams at Orofino High School in Idaho, where the state's mental institution is located.

They're called the Maniacs.

Still, owner Dan Snyder's got a kajillion-dollar franchise in the Washington Redskins, and he's gonna protect the hell out of it as is.

So, in these turbulent times when righteous things well and truly need to be said, damn near anything the team tries to do to pitch in results in setting themselves up for comment on another front of the same issue:

 

To be clear, their situation isn't the same as, say, Florida State and Utah. Those universities received permission from the local tribes to use their nicknames. The only approval Snyder got was from the courts against the wishes of Native American complaintants.

And their nickname's tone doesn't ring noble like, say, the Vikings and 49ers. It doesn't even reach the level of MLB's Indians and Braves.

It's gotta be asked, though: For the average sports fan, does Redskins even mean Redskins anymore?

 

That doesn't make the issue any better, of course, but it might serve to explain how in the name of Noah Webster their PR staffers can express support for #BlackLivesMatter or any other worthy cause and still keep a straight face.

It sorta gives the concept of American exceptionalism a more detached perspective.

Kinda like the point George Carlin made about how medical terms now serve a different purpose:

 

Either that, or the term Redskins has gone word-blind to most of the public who don't have an opinion on it. All they see is a football team.

Crazy, but likely.

To the woke, though, maybe they can take solace in the thought that no organization could ever have put the issue front-&-center and be more backhandedly effective about it than the Washington Redskins supporting a similar issue.

 

Taking stuff at face value can do that sometimes.