George Will: Out With 'Redskins' — and Everything Else! — The Patriot Post:
"Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, also is the time for The Washington Post and other sensitivity auditors to get back on — if they will pardon the expression — the warpath against the name of the Washington Redskins.
The niceness police at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have won court approval of their decision that the team’s name “may disparage” Native Americans.
We have a new national passion for moral and historical hygiene, a determination to scrub away remembrances of unpleasant things, such as the name
Oklahoma, which is a compound of two Choctaw words meaning “red” and “people.”
Connecticut’s state Democratic Party has leapt into the vanguard of this movement, vowing to sin no more:
Never again will it have a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner. Connecticut Democrats shall still dine to celebrate their party’s pedigree but shall not sully the occasions by mentioning the names of two slave owners.
Because
Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners have long been liturgical events for Democrats nationwide, now begins an entertaining scramble by states' parties — Georgia’s, Missouri’s, Iowa’s, New Hampshire’s, and Maine’s already have taken penitential actions — to escape guilt by association with the third and seventh presidents.
...Hundreds of towns, counties, parks, schools, etc., are named for
Washington.
..
.Jacksonville, Florida — a state where Andrew Jackson honed his skill at tormenting Native Americans — Jefferson City, Missouri, Madison, Wisconsin, and other places must be renamed for people more saintly. And speaking of saints:
...To Massachusetts and Minnesota, which should furl their flags.
Massachusetts' flag shows a Native American holding a bow and arrow, a weapon that
reinforces a hurtful stereotype of Native Americans as less than perfectly peaceful.
A gimlet-eyed professor in Wisconsin has noticed that Minnesota’s flag includes the state seal, which depicts two figures,
a pioneer tilling a field, and a Native American riding away — and carrying a spear.
A weapon.
Yikes.
The farmer is white and industrious; the Native America is nomadic.
So, Minnesota’s seal communicates a subliminal slander, a coded message of white superiority.
Who knew that Minnesotans, who have voted Democratic in 10 consecutive presidential elections since 1972, are so insensitive?
This is liberalism’s dilemma:
There are so many things to be offended by, and so little time to agonize about each."
