I have written about the harm done by racial stereotypes my entire career, with special attention to offensive sports nicknames. I wrote this in The St Paul Pioneer Press to “welcome” the NFL’s Washington D.C. football team to Minnesota for the 1992 Super Bowl at the Metrodome. Somethings never seem to change. But this one has to change. And soon.
NO OFFENSE, BUT NICKNAMES REALLY DO MATTER
By Nick Coleman
Jack Kent Cooke, the crusty billionaire owner of the Washington football team that will play the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVI, is a man who likes decisions. For example, he has decided to get married four times, the last three to women who were a combined 97 years younger than he is.
The old goat.
I mean it in a respectful way when I call him an old goat. Just as Cooke means to be respectful when he calls his team the “ Redskins.” The Redskins name is not a racially offensive term, Cooke says. Far from it. The name simply suggests the fiercely proud spirit of American Indians, a people who have red skin in the popular imagination, if not in reality. So when I say that Jack Kent Cooke is an old goat, I don’t want you to think that he is a randy barnyard rut king who can’t keep his smelly paws off of young women.
Heavens no.
I simply mean to convey my admiration for the nimble-footed manner in which the 79-year-old Cooke is able to negotiate the singles scene. Heh heh heh.
The Redskins are the darling of the thousands of elected boobs, bureaucratic poohbahs and tax-sucking patronage workers who feed off the government trough in Washington. Not many of them are interested in the problems that Indians here in Frozen Flyover Land have with the name of their beloved team.
The Washington Post, a newspaper that once brought down Tricky Dick, hasn’t published a decent story on the nickname controversy in months. But it did send a columnist to Minneapolis in a motor home decorated in Redskins colors, calling it the official Redskins bandwagon. The Post used to play Woodward and Bernstein. Now it plays cheerleader. Meanwhile, Kennedys, Quayles and other leading lights of the Washington scene would stab each other in the back for an invitation to watch the big game with Cooke and his lovely fourth bride, Marlena the Smuggler.
Hold on there. Don’t be offended if I call Mrs. Cooke a smuggler. I don’t mean to dredge up that unfortunate business about her 1986 drug smuggling conviction. I only want to express my respect and admiration for a woman with the courage and resourcefulness to help bring cocaine into this country.
I have learned how to make such useful distinctions from Mr. Cooke.
Cooke believes that if Indians would just learn to relax and enjoy life, they wouldn’t get their shorts in a bunch over the Redskins nickname. Indian leaders keep saying that the Redskins name perpetuates a degrading and offensive stereotype akin to taboo slurs such as nigger or kike. Mr. Cooke, however, has worked patiently to educate the poor Indians.
The official position of Mr. Cooke’s football team, a copy of which was faxed to me yesterday, is that the Redskins name, adopted in 1933, is not offensive. Not in the slightest.
“Over the long history of the Washington Redskins ,” reads the statement, “the name Redskins has reflected positive attributes of the American Indian such as dedication, courage and pride.”
So you see, all you little people, the Redskins name is only a goodhearted attempt to show honor and respect for Native Americans. And those whining, publicity-seeking protesters who cry about how the Redskins nickname insults their humanity and affects their children negatively and promotes a harmful stereotype, well, all those people should be proud to be called Redskins .
Just like Jack Kent Cooke is proud to be called a pasty-faced dumb Canuck.
I know. That sounds nasty at first. But when you stop to think about it, I’m just paying him a compliment. To call him a pasty-faced dumb Canuck, a name I have been using for him since 1992, is not meant to be offensive. It just reflects some of his positive attributes, such as his thick white hide, his impressive bullheadedness and his humble origins in the Great White North.
Welcome to Minnesota, Bonehead.