USPTO and Politically Correct Speech

The US Patent & Trademark Office issued a ruling that the name of the Washington, DC NFL football team is derogatory and offensive toward Native Americans. They cancelled the trademark.

The Washington team has had its name since 1933. They started out in Boston as the Boston Braves in 1932, becoming the Boston Redskins when they moved to Fenway Park in 1933. Boston, in colonial times, had a friendly relationship with the surrounding Native American nation; the Native Americans and their new neighbors coexisted peacefully (for the most part) and helped each other out. The team’s founder respected that history when he named his team after the proud Native American.

The football team moved to DC in 1937 and was, from that day til this, known as the Washington Redskins. Their logo is a very handsome Native American brave, who signifies very well a tough and successful football team.

Evidently the USPTO is falling for the current trend toward politically correct speech, something a government agency has no business doing. This mark is almost 100 years old. It is a famous mark. And it will now cost the Redskins franchise $millions to rebrand. That, of course, will be reflected in an increase in ticket prices, which deleteriously affects the public. This is all for something I have trouble comprehending. I would think that naming a successful football franchise after the proud people who originally found this continent and helped their neighbors through tough times would be something that honors the Native American, not something that denigrates them.

A line needs to be drawn somewhere on all this political correctness; canceling an old and famous mark that honors the Native American by naming an NFL franchise after them goes, in my book, more than a little overboard.

All this politically correct speech has me flummoxed. I give up. I shall continue to simply call a spade a spade; if you find that to be offensive or politically incorrect, you’re welcome to call me whatever politically incorrect term for a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant you can come up with — the two I know of are a WASP and a honkey (a term that I find hilarious because it is actually accurate). I won’t get mad over noises.