Posted on 08/08/2005 10:56:42 AM PDT by JZelle
Perhaps Myles Brand allowed a tear to run down his cheek after dancing with the Indian nicknames and mascots in his midst. His pretense is in the company of the Hollywood Indian of Italian descent who appeared in the "Keep America Beautiful" commercial of the '70s, shown with a tear after he sees the garbage-strewn waterway and landscape. There is something disingenuous about it all, almost in the manner of Ward Churchill, the wannabe Indian of Boulder, Colo., who plays his dark scholarship merely for effect. One of the problems with finding fault in the Utes is that you are obligated to find fault in Utah as well, if only to be consistent with your ultra-sensitivity. Utah is a word taken from the Ute tribe, meaning "people of the mountains," which is an affront to all the hard-working hillbillies in America and nothing against those who decorate their lawns with a massive satellite dish. Being acutely sensitive has become a cottage industry in America, no matter how misplaced and misguided the tripe often is. Maybe that is destined to be Oprah's legacy, for few emote as well as her. There rarely is a dry eye in Oprah's house, barring the time mental health expert Tom Cruise was jumping all around the studio set, expressing devotion to the latest squeeze in his life before skeptical eyes. Brand objects for those who do not object. The genuine Seminoles have voiced their approval of Florida State's Chief Osceola. Yet Brand and his band of highly trained emotionalists veer from the tribal line, which is a fairly impressive academic trick. The Seminoles are just not deep enough to understand the psychologically scarring impact of Chief Osceola atop a horse.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The liberals in Chapel Hill will have a real problem on their hands when Tarheels is under attack.
As an alumna of IU, we endured several years of this guy. On the academic front, top programs slipped dramatically in their rankings, and IU as a public institution slipped from to the bottom 3rd nationally, and slipped to a bottom-feeder in the Big Ten.
As for sports, well, it went from an athletic department operating in the black to operating in the red.
Although he is known for firing Bob Knight, the firing that caused the greatest harm to IU was firing IU's football coach, Bill Mallory. He had taken a bottom-feeding program and turned it into a program that was going to post-season bowl games. Attendance was over 40,000. THe had two recruits who were in the final 5 Heisman candidates, The football program since has become a financial drain on the institution. Attendance averages 20-25,000.
We're just glad he's gone from IU, and delighted that other schools are getting a taste of this guy. He's a legend in his own mind, he's got a huge ego, and he expects you to pay homage to him.
Beat them. Beat them out of our collective psyche until all we know of them are gambling casinos and substance abuse.
I grew up in COMANCHE, TX, and I bet we NEVER change the name of our town or our mascot, the INDIANS. This is an honor to the Comanchees, not a slur. Anyone who is offended needs to get over it. They can see a therapist.
My father in law brought up that commercial of the indian with a tear, and said we need a new commercial. It would be the old white guy who stops on the indian reservation and see's the heaps of trash and gets the tear in his eye because of how they've screwed up the beautiful countryside.
The trashiest places in America are on indian reservations.
The NCAA seems to have overlooked the nickname "Fighting Irish". By the by, PETA wants to eliminate animal nicknames too.
Isn't Mrs. Dr. Brand a philosophy professor at IU?
Nope, he was full blooded Sicilian.
first of all, the words are English, aren't they?
Braves....Redskins....Chiefs.....aren't these ENGLISH words?......
secondly, we give sports teams names that conjure up bravery, courage, strength,quickness, etc etc....
why would anyone object to that?
I just wish we would have more "Pollack Punishers" or " Mexican Banditos" or "Tokyo Shoguns" as names....other cultures would probably love to be honored......
A few years ago an edict was passed in North Carolina that prohibited anyone from using the word "Indian" in a name. The government body that enacted this was The Bureau of Indian Affairs.
"I wonder if Mr. Knott is correct with this sentence. I thought the actor in the "Keep America Beautiful" PSAs, Iron Eyes Cody was a Souix Indian. I would appreciate it, it any of you who know would help me out here."
Here you go:
http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/ironeyes.htm
Iron Eyes Cody was born Espera DeCorti on 3 April 1904 in the small town of Kaplan, Louisiana. He was the son of Francesca Salpietra and Antonio DeCorti, she an immigrant from Sicily who had arrived in the USA in 1902, and he another immigrant who had arrived in America not long before her. Theirs was an arranged marriage, and the couple had four children, with Espera (or Oscar, as he was called) their second eldest. In 1909, when Espera was five years old, Antonio DeCorti abandoned his wife and children and headed for Texas. Francesca married again, this time to a man named Alton Abshire, with whom she bore five more children.
As teenagers the three DeCorti boys joined their father in Texas. He had since altered his name from Antonio DeCorti to Tony Corti, and the boys apparently followed suit as far as their surname was concerned. In 1924, following their father's death, the boys moved to Hollywood, changed "Corti" to "Cody," and began working in the motion picture industry. It was about this time Iron Eyes began presenting himself to the world as an Indian. Iron Eyes' two brothers, Joseph William and Frank Henry, found work as extras but soon drifted into other lines of work. Iron Eyes went on to achieve a full career as an actor, appearing in well over a hundred movies and dozens of television shows across the span of several decades.
Although Iron Eyes was not born an Indian, he lived his adult years as one. He pledged his life to Native American causes, married an Indian woman (Bertha Parker), adopted two Indian boys (Robert and Arthur), and seldom left home without his beaded moccasins, buckskin jacket and braided wig. His was not a short-lived masquerade nor one that was donned and doffed whenever expedient — he maintained his fiction throughout his life and steadfastly denied rumors that he was not an Indian, even after his half-sister surfaced to tell the story in 1996 and to provide pointers to the whereabouts of his birth certificate and other family documents.
Cody died on 5 January 1999 at the age of 94.
And fromAnswers.com: Iron Eyes Cody
Iron Eyes Cody (April 3, 1904 – January 4, 1999) was an actor born in Kaplan, Louisiana. He was born Espera DeCorti, the son of Italian immigrants Francesca Salpietra and Antonio DeCorti. He was not born a Native American, but he claimed to be part Cherokee and part Cree. His wife Bertha Parker and adopted children were Native American. Cody began his acting career at the age of 12 and continued to work until the time of his death. In 1996, the New Orleans Times-Picayune exposed his true heritage, but Cody denied it.
He appeared in more than 200 films. However, he's most famous for his Crying Indian role in the Keep America Beautiful public service announcement back in the early 1970's, an ecology commercial in which he shows a tear after looking at a polluted river.
It's really quite simple. People don't name sports teams after groups they actually despise. There are no teams called the "n*****s" or the "s***s" or the "k***s." Sports teams are named after symbols of power, strength, and courage. It's an honor.
And if American Indians want to complain about whites "stealing" their heritage, they can do it in some language other than English, which is part of _my_ heritage that I don't want someone else "appropriating" thank you very much.
To be honest with you, I think it really is the barest of the slimmist native americans who are bothered.
I've seen the people get upset on TV, but I have never, personally met a single native american who told me it bothered him with the team names.
I was in class in college with a few kids who were native americans.
They used to wear sports gear (redskins, braves, none of them liked the cleveland indians...but they told me it was because the indians sucked, not for ethnic reasons), I had teachers who just couldn't get how these kids didn't get upset.
I really think the MSM blew this one totally out of proportion and this is being pushed by mostly your typical white elitists using a handfull of native american discontents as a front to keep pushing their own agenda.
I know SI did an article years ago, and polled exstensivly but came out with most native americans being indifferent.
Then explain the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs.
A couple of years ago, Elon College, a small liberal arts college with a football team, decided to change its team's nickname from the "Fighting Christians" (I kid you not) to "Phoenix."
How gay is that?
or the UC Riverside Anteaters. ZOT!
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