PC in DC

When I grew up a couple (ahem) decades ago in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, Billy Kilmer was the quarterback for the Redskins, we actually won a game or two, and I have fond memories of, the gods forgive me, my father in a construction paper head dress doing an "Indian dance" in front of the TV, all of us singing "Hail to the Redskins". Now if you think the NAME is bad, look at the lyrics to the fight song and picture that scene.

I was not put on this earth to make friends and I have done a damn good job of doing just that, and my blog is here for me to voice opinions as I wish, repercussions be damned (you also cannot strike me through the computer). Anyone who knows me knows I despise political correctness, which differs from polite, empathetic speech.  I think, in its extreme, it is simply a form of social control. The extent to which I am politically correct goes no further than common sense. After all, I am a blond female who is 10 pounds overweight and 10 years over 40, so I am no stranger to jokes and names that can be hurtful without the name callers realizing it. I have no idea how women got left out of the PC file but that is another blog.

We all complain about our parents, but one thing mine did really really right was never to limit me to girly things.  If I wanted a Matchbox car for my collection I got it as readily as I got an Easy Bake oven (and if you do not know what those are they are now on display at the Smithsonian, I kid you not).  Climb a tree or play hop scotch, I did it all without a second thought as to whether or not it was" proper" for a girl to do. So the day the boy down the street took my Matchbox car and told me I couldn't play with it because I was a girl shocked me out of my penny loafers (did  I forget to add tall skinny dork to my self description?). I played baseball (not softball) and make-up with my sister. I sculpted clay Loch Ness Monsters and painted pictures with houses with white picket fences. I had no one telling me  "You cannot because you have no penis and you have a vagina".

Fast forward to high school, I outrun a couple boys in track...did not matter; out drink Mike Lusick, football team giant, still did not matter. I would always be a girl and therefore a lesser human. I could egotistically tell you my IQ is probably higher than yours, but it wouldn't matter because I am a GIRL.

So after being brought up at the cusp of the "go to college to get a husband" and "go to college so you do not need to get a husband" years, women were demanding equal pay yet still calling themselves "gals". It was a very confusing time for our gender.Being of the Gen X crowd, that is, the ones of us who are technically baby boomers but were born when the Beatles hit our shores and 20 years after WWII ended, we really had no good role models; man hating mothers or man-serving grandmothers.

So you have a generation of women who have married, had kids, and worked for pennies on the buck to a man's salary.  Then came the Women's Movement, and Equal Rights Movement, so finally everyone was finally realizing this inequality should stop. But it never did for women. We still are called spoiled sports if we take offense to a blond joke, a PMS joke, or anything said at our expense. We are chastised  if we do not react with our best Geisha smile. 

Coming from this perspective, and having lived the last 15 years or so with political correctness gone to the extreme in some cases, I find so much if this nothing but controlling. I honestly do not know what to call a person  of African heritage anymore. Some are now taking offense at African American. So I say black and I say white. Tough. You are not an African American any more than I am an Italian-Irish-English-Spanish American, yea how fun is THAT to say. You and I are Americans(unless you were not born here). But really we are not. We are INVADERS. Native Americans are the one and only TRUE Americans (a country misnamed in the first place) and should be the only ones with the rights to that name. But in the real world that is PC gone amuck.  How about human, wouldn't that be nice for a change? Ah, but I dream again.

So what about these here Redskins in D.C.?  I spend the majority of my life there and every bloody season the Washington Post did and does a piece on how the name should be changed. It has been an issue there for at least 30 years, but the rest of the nation did not hear of it since it was a local issue. Never got changed. Old Jack Kent Cooke did not give a damn about anyone and would not change the name of his team. But the one thing I always found interesting, and I am sure there are old Washington Post articles to back this up, was that none of the Native American organizations took a stand on the issue.They honestly did not seem to care. The only thing I recall, because it was so on the mark, was a Post article that argued the name of a sports team was so beneath the real issues they were having that they would not even recognize it as an issue at all,  it was so inconsequential. Now in D.C. There are not a lot of Native Americans and the ones there are revered as god-like and almost always get laid whenever they want. (It's that hair/eye combo dude). Sure you heard whispers of "reservations" but everyone was told if they wanted off, hey, there were no fences.  It has not been, until relatively recently, that the true plight of the Native American has come to my attention. It  is a disgrace to this government and hopefully we are looked down upon for it by the rest of the world.

But do we change the team's name? No. And I will give you my screwed up logic on this one.

Anyone who knows football knows Redskins fans are some of the most rabid fans around. The tickets are sold decades in advance. They can lose for years and the fans still love them.  So if the name is changed it is not going to do the Native American cause much good.  It's not right, it's not fair, but it's true. These fans will be angry at Native Americans for taking their team name away and look upon them as yet another controlling PC group. So when the votes are counted, the plate passed or the petition signed they will remember who took away their Redskins. I KNOW THESE PEOPLE, they will. Not nice but true. Personally, I believe it is more a backlash against the PC movement than Native Americans but the results are the same.

Another argument, why not the Cleveland Indians(or Browns, same same), the Knicks (derogatory towards knickerbockers, or Germans), the Braves, The Celtics. The Washington Bullets* changed names, with a really bizarre ending, and the Carthage College Redmen were kind enough to change it to Red Men. Here is a link, see for yourself how many team names are quite offensive. 

This is where I get into a lot of trouble. Toughen up! You think being called a "tall drink of water" or "do-able" or "dumb but darling" has been easy?  If you are a man I bet your boss never requested you not wear panties to work one day. You think walking streets in fear for our safety, all 51% of the population of us, all of our lives, is easy? We look over our shoulders all the time. We endure cat calls and are called "dykes" if we protest, like it's some kind of compliment. We smile to keep our jobs when our asses are pinched, yes even now, because it is still a white male world and we still do lose jobs, sexual harassment laws  be damned. Yet even white males on TV are portrayed now as dumb and run by their genitals, blacks are stereotyping themselves, as are Latinos and every Native American you see is wise and spiritual. Not a bad thing but still a stereotype. I personally would not want to have to live up to that high a standard because of my genetics. PC is crap. It's nothing but speech control, sanctioned judgment, and though it is not as rampant as it once was,  it's there. To be clear, PC to me means that I have to call you by the name you choose and when you change that choice I must use the new name. In other words, if I do not use the words and think the thoughts you choose for me then I am a bigot. That is PC to me.

So here is the thing. I do not complain that the women who read the news on TV have zero qualifications, can barely speak properly and obviously have the job because they are completely plastic and easy on a man's eye. I complain at the quality of tripe coming out of their painted mouths. THAT is an issue worth fighting for. I do not complain that Obama is half black and half white (which I do not care but this is for the sake of argument) I care that he has drones pointed at my ass and GitMo is still operational, THOSE are issues. I do not care that the Redskins are called The Redskins, look at the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, if that is not a self-image killer for women I don't know what is. I am more concerned that in the Southwestern US you can be a Native American and be turned down for a job because of it and no one will do a god damn thing. From what I hear from friends out there, native Americans are treated very closely to how Blacks were treated in the 1950s. THAT people is the issue! Pick your battles. If people think your biggest problem is that a sports team is named after you then you are defeating yourselves. They will tell themselves you have no fences around your land to keep you in, they will tell you you are an independent nation so pay no taxes, they will say you are filthy rich from your casinos...yes, they say it, I hear it, it's disgusting and hateful and ignorant but if the only time we hear your voices as one people is to change a football team's name then what else will these idiots think?

And if we allow the media, politicians and the speech police to take up our time and energy on these non-issues we never get the chance to challenge them on the things that are important and THAT bothers me. A little sleight of hand on their part.

So there you are. Call me a racist. call me a bigot. I feel I am neither, I am just trying to pull the wool off our eyes so that we are not sidetracked away from what is really important here.

And the reality is, if you want Washington D.C. to pass ANY legislation helping the unfair treatment of our true citizens, the Nations we somehow feel we "own", then you better let them call their little ball club what they want. It's just a game and a way to sell beer anyway.

*This is a darkly amusing story to me. The Wizards, Washington D.C.s Pro Basketball Team, used to be The Bullets, but they changed the name because the black community felt that since, at that time, DC had the highest number of shootings in the nation, Bullets was inappropriate. So the Washington Post did a write-in campaign asking readers to submit their ideas for a new name. At the end there were five: Wizards, Dragons, Express ,Stallions or Sea Dogs. I voted for Sea Dogs. When Wizards won I think I laughed at their stupidity for days. Wizards. Really. For a mostly black city. Wizards as in the Big Guy in the KKK is called the Wizard. Great change there guys.