By Nate Thayer
June 18, 2014
Uh Oh. The Culture Wars have just escalated to a dangerous new level. The U.S. Patent Trademark Office has cancelled the rights for the American football team “The Washington Redskins” to own its own name, its logos, images, or its merchandise after today’s ruling the name “Redskins” itself is a racial slur and “disparaging”.
Effective immediately, this means the Washington Redskins no longer have a protected ownership right to usage of the Redskins name or associated images and are in jeopardy of losing hundreds of millions of dollars. As of today’s decision, the Redskins do not own the rights to their own merchandise, logo, name, or images from which they make hundreds of millions of dollars from licensing and franchise rights.
Here is a photo gallery of some alternative name proposals for the sports team which has the citizens of the Leader of the Free World whipped up into a frenzied national tizzy, and some hints of the tone of the debate we can expect to be inundated with.
The danger to rich owners of football teams?
They are threatened with losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. These are the fighting words of the language spoken by the small group of overweight, not necessarily bright, very wealthy White Guys. We are talking big money at stake for the billionaire sports franchise owners and those who have signed millions in dollars for licensed fees and royalties for everything from clothing to coffee cups. And the truth is their lawyers and PR hacks can no longer legally object if, say, you or me reproduce those images and names.
The downside?
The sports owners and their franchise licensees will fight back hard and dirty and appeal to their core base of support of the lowest common denominator, escalating the culture wars.
The Danger to you and I (I should really speak for myself here)?
Starting today, we will be shell shocked from being bombarded by inarticulate cliches, inane sports metaphors, and an utterly depressing neanderthal debate on the state of American popular culture and ideology on the dominant social issues of our age.
And the infantry troops, the backbone of the sports industry moguls base of support for this looming escalation of the battle of the culture wars?
Overweight, middle age, Walter-Mitty-fantasy-obsessed, monosyllabic, beer drinking, White Guys who grunt a lot, pump their fists in the air over little balls being thrown amongst gangs of other adult males who then beat each other up trying to stop the other guy from making their metaphorical penis’s shrink in the harsh glare of public scrutiny in large public stadiums, which are simultaneously broadcast live to every manicured lawn ranch house in suburbia and every single-wide trailer with a gun rack above the fake fireplace in the woods throughout America.
Cartoonist Tom Stiglich goes all in on the Washington Redskins logo, putting it on par with a Nazi and Confederate flag.
This demographic appears to.have–and I am being a bit snarky here–the collective intellectual debating prowess and sophisticated stances on racial sensitivities and social issues disproportionately found in college fraternity houses or strip joints on remote stretches of rural two lane highways.
Their general demographic propensities regarding such issues as women (with a focus on their breasts), guns, Muslims, war, crying at collective public displays of blind nationalism, bumper stickers extolling gun rights, Jesus, and their kid on the local school honor roll, foreigners stealing American Jobs, and mowing their teeny rectangular shaped pieces of grass while shirtless, with their paunch hanging over their belt line, smoking a cigarette, wearing a hat emblazoned with the name of a power tool on it, and drinking cans of Budweiser Light on weekends while seated on large motorized lawn mowers between their legs, leans precariously towards a version of the views dominant during the 19th century.
One helpful suggestion for a new logo: “The Washington Towel Head”
For the sports ownership faction of the ruling elite who are deeply distressed at today’s ruling that the name “Redskins” is now legally a racial slur, these will be their go-to guys; their base of support as they try to salvage their millions by whipping up public support to overturn the Patent Office ruling.
Hooking and reeling in these sorta modern day equivalent of Hitler Youth Lite will be like shooting goldfish in an aquarium. More succinctly, the more impressive portions of the gene pool of the U.S. culture wars–those of whom one would feel comfy introducing to their mothers–are unlikely to be prominently featured.
Get ready for this to get as equally goofy as it does ugly–quickly. I may stock up on extra provisions for my bunker to wait it all out.
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