“I want you to imagine the federal government eliminating your private property rights due to the interpretation of political correctness by five people, or a very tiny minority of people,” Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners today:
The tiny minority of people are ostensibly, they say, offended by something that you own. Imagine an agency of the federal government, without any proper adjudication before any sort of court, tribunal, or what have you, just comes along and, on their own whim, decides to eliminate your private property rights. Because of interpretation of political correctness, because they’re liberals, because they’re statists and authoritarians and assigned to them that kind of sweeping power.
That’s exactly what the Washington Redskins are dealing with today. The Patent and Trademark Office simply eliminated their right of the Redskins to own that trademark. It doesn’t mean they have to change their name. What it means is that if — and there will be a series of appeals on this. The Redskins will not go down without a war dance. After all the appeals, if this ruling holds, it means that anybody can use the Redskins trademark and logo for anything, that the Washington Redskins do not own their name. That’s what this ruling means. They don’t have the right because some people are offended. It can be spread around. If you, Snerdley, wanted to start selling caps or T-shirts with the word “Redskins” or “Washington Redskins” and use their logo, you could, because they don’t have the right to own it, even though they do own it.
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The Patent and Trademark Office stripping ownership rights of the trademark Washington Redskins from the Washington Redskins does not require them to change their name. It just means they are not the legal owners of the trademark. And if it stands, anybody can market it, anybody can use it, anybody can make money off of it. Theory being this would hurt the ownership of the Redskins and the NFL. They don’t have exclusive ownership rights. They don’t get the profits from the sale of licensed merchandise. That would force Snyder to change the name. That’s the thinking.
Read the whole thing. Sports used to be an escape valve from politics and the real world, but are now increasingly the sole province of the PC left. And increasingly, from my perspective — and I suspect I’m not alone — they can have them.
Update: One possible substitution for the Redskins’ logo? “I say replace it with a hammer and sickle.”
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