IT’S FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND, SO IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER UBER-WOKE PR STUNT FROM NIKE: Last year, the Betsy Ross flag was cancelled by Nike during the Fourth of July holiday season, as a sneak preview of our current summer of leftist discontent. Now it’s time for Nike to generate PR by another major cancellation: “Nike removes Redskins name, apparel from its website,” NBC reports. (Which also helps to deflect Nike from this unfortunate fact: “Nike Called Out for Low Wages in Asia Amid Colin Kaepernick Ad Promotion,” Newsweek reported in September of 2018:
“The share of production costs of Nike and Adidas shoes that ends up in a worker’s pocket is now a staggering 30 percent less than in the early 1990s (2.5 percent in 2017 for Nike shoes compared with 4 percent in 1995),” the organization said, Reuters reported. According to CCC, the company has transferred much of its manufacturing to Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam as wages have increased in China.
More pressure is being put on the Redskins team owner Dan Snyder by FedEx: “Stadium sponsor FedEx asks Redskins to change nickname,” ESPN adds. Today, the team issued a statement that they will “undergo a thorough review of the team’s name,” which means a change is possibly on the way. Yesterday, one wag on Twitter suggested an excellent choice to allow Synder to thumb his nose at Nike: “The Washington Uighers.”
At his Lid blog, Jeff Dunetz has a list of suggestions for more replacement names, including this possibility: “How about taking a number? After all, the 49ers have a long history of winning football. Why not call the team the ‘Washington 26 Trillion,’ after the national debt? Nah, that won’t work because then the team will have to change what they are called every few weeks.”
Of course, as Stephen Miller tweets, erasing the Redskins’ name means erasing a bit of black history: “The first African American QB to win a Super Bowl did it with the Washington Redskins. Have fun guys!”
Also in National Wokeball News: “NFL plans to play Black national anthem before Week 1 games this season,” the New York Post reports. As Twitchy adds, “Judging by the comments, we weren’t the only ones who didn’t know that ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ is ‘traditionally known’ as the black national anthem, but NFL viewers will be getting familiar with it, as the league intends to play it before ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ before Week 1 games this season.”
According to CBS, Roger Goodell, the NFL’s commissioner, donated a paltry $2,700 to Chris Christie’s stillborn presidential bid in 2016. This fall’s NFL season is shaping up to be a much larger in-kind contribution to the Trump 2020 campaign.