It has been a year and a half, but our long national nightmare is finally drawing to a close: in less than a month, the NFL team formerly known to its everlasting shame as the Washington Redskins is going to choose a new name. The chosen moniker will be offered in order to appease even the perpetually offended woke legions that forced the team to drop its original name, which it had borne since 1933. If you think all this is howlingly stupid, that’s only because it is.
The 87-year-old team name was ditched because the team finally succumbed during the George Floyd riots to the intense woke pressure to which it was being subjected. The assumption was that the name “Redskins” was white supremacist and disparaging to American Indians, and there was no opportunity given for any rational discussion on the matter. In reality, the team was called the “Redskins” out of admiration for the strength and courage of the Native Americans and a desire to project the same virtues. The idea that a sports team name disparages those who bear the name is a ridiculous proposition that rests on the absurd premise that teams are named for things that people despise.
The closest that ever came to being true was in the two previous major league baseball franchises in Washington, both of which were known as the Senators. It’s a pity the Washington Senators don’t exist today because if there ever was a disparaging team name, that was it. If the Redskins name had to be dropped because it insulted American Indians, the Senators name would have had to go because it insulted not the 100 solons in the Capitol building, but the poor baseball players who had to play under a name that referred to corrupt kleptocrats, hacks, and pigs at the public trough.
The renaming of sports teams with supposedly offensive names is of a piece with the pulling-down of statues of Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Frederick Douglass, and other American heroes. The idea is to intimidate Americans into being ashamed of our own history and cultural heritage and to accustom us to the idea that the old order is breaking down and being replaced by something radically new, which will require us to adjust our attitudes and submit to the superior judgment of our woke masters. The things we took for granted or even loved — the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians — are suddenly offensive and must be repudiated as part of the brave new multicultural society we are building.
And so what comes next? The ex-Redskins have been playing as the Washington Football Team for two seasons now; while all the other teams have colorful nicknames, the Washington footballers play with this blunt and flat-footed name as if in penance for the decades in which they were racist without even knowing it. But Washington’s co-CEO Tanya Snyder has revealed that the new name field has been narrowed down to eight choices: Armada, Presidents, Brigade, Commanders, Redhawks, Defenders, RedWolves, and the Football Team. However, team president Jason Wright said Tuesday that RedWolves has been ruled out for trademark issues.
Related: Did the Cleveland Indians Really Demean Native Americans?
That leaves six other names if the team isn’t going to keep playing with its drab, penitential no-name name. And predictably, they’re all dreadful. Armada? The Armada most Americans are familiar with is the Spanish one, which got famously defeated. Defenders? So they’re not going to play offense? Brigade and Commanders are just as bad. Don’t these Washingtonians know that their woke overlords will not be any happier with military imagery than they were with Native American imagery? Redhawks? Come on, man! This isn’t a high school team!
That leaves Presidents, which right now, and only right now, would be the perfect name for a woke football team: they could even put a picture of Old Joe Biden on their helmets. But what if Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or someone like them is elected president in 2024? The Presidents name would have to go in that case. And even if Kamala Harris or Hillary or AOC is the winner of the presidential election in 2024, the plural form used in the name would mean that Washington’s football team was celebrating all those racist slaveowners we have been taught to hate — Washington, Jefferson, and the rest.
That will never do. So it looks as if the Washington Football Team, if it doesn’t want to run afoul of our woke guardians (which is, incidentally, the new name of Cleveland’s docile and submissive baseball team), will have to stick with its lack of a name. Or better, it could ditch its finalists list and go for something their masters will really love: the Washington Oppressed. The Washington Victims. The Washington Transgenders. The Washington Proles. Finally, some names that will satisfy everyone.
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