[Right Wing Professor]

But will they continue to call Notre Dame the Fighting Irish? And it's too bad the Braves left Boston, because they'd have to then refer to the Boston Red Sox and The Other Boston Baseball team.

BTW, her statements about the etymology are nonsense. 'Redskin' dates at least to the late 17th century.

[Bob Buchholz]

I am personally offended when I hear about the "SOONERS", after all these were a bunch of cheating whiteys! /sarcasm>

[dighton]

Finally, we've decided to drop the stereotypical modifier "Fighting" when used with team nicknames such as Fighting Sioux or Fighting Illini.

Sure, call football teams the "Pipe-of-Peace-Smoking" Sioux, Illini, and whatnot.

[dirtboy]

I've got a solution. Let's come up with name that reflects the four major ethic groups in this country: white, black, hispanic and native American, and call the team the fourskins...

[clintonh8r]

Hey! The two editors "put together a packet" and then talked it over with other sniveling newsies. I mean, who can argue with decisions made with the support of packets and earnest conversations with people who are bound to agree with you?

[Billthedrill]

We have stopped using the nickname "Redskins" to refer to the professional football team of the nation's capital.

I have too. "Losers" sounds just fine...

[pgyanke]

It's times like this (and not necessarily last Sunday) that I'm glad I'm a Raider fan. Apparently, this, and other news rags, will allow us to keep our mascot... for the time being.

Here's some free advice for all of the Indian-honoring schools and clubs out there... let them go. Let's see how the Native American lobby likes no mention of their culture at all. Here are some possible alternatives...

Washington Wannabes
Atlanta's Really Good Baseball Team
Cleveland White Settlers
FSU Gator Poop
Group of People Who Like to Play Sports from Illinois
Kansas City Industrialists

...you get the picture.

[RonF]

First, their uncritical acceptance of the entymology of "redskins", without checking primary sources themselves, is suspect.

Secondly, I wonder if they're going to call the Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL "Chicago"? The Chicago Blackhawks were named as such to honor a specific Native American individual from the Chicago area. The logo is a reasonably accurate depiction of a Native American in profile (even if the feathers were never colored like that), and the team has never adopted a mascot or allowed any caricactures or other bastardizations of the logo or the name.

[Billthedrill]

I can tell you that the local seahawks are getting pretty PO'ed about having the Seattle football team named after them. Too embarrassing.

[RonF]

Another interesting point is their banning of using an arrowhead. The Boy Scouts of America has an honor society (whose members are elected by the boys in the program) called the Order of the Arrow. The logo used to be a Native American head wearing a full-blown Plains Indian war bonnet. Due to some PC sensitivities (perhaps called for), they've changed that to an arrowhead. Given that an arrow is used as a symbol during various aspects of the OA program, that's a better choice anyway. But that's now not PC enough?

[SoDak]

Obviously nonsense, she got the info from another newspaper.

[clintonh8r]

When I was in the Marine Corps every Indian kid was nicknamed "Chief" and nobody seemed to be offended. They were pretty damn tough and I doubt they brooded over crap like "sensitivity for their heritage." If they were offended, they were the kind of guys who would let you know! But then, that was more than 30 years ago before,... uh....skins got thin and liberal white America went on a self-hating guilt binge.

[Junior]

We will no longer use "Redskins" or "Skins" because it is a racial slur. It derives from an old, genocidal practice in this country of scalping Indians to earn a bounty. A bounty hunter could prove he had killed an Indian by turning in a scalp. The bloody scalps were called "redskins." I learned this from the Portland Press Herald in Maine, which banned "Redskins" from its sports pages in July 2000.

Beep. Circle takes the square. The Indians were called "Redskins" because of their red skin. Another sobriquet was "red man." This clown obviously does not know anything about that which he speaks.

[Argus]

When we're reporting on that team, we'll call it Washington.

What, and honor a rich, old, white, warmongering slaveholder who got himself "selected" President by undemocratic means? You gotta be kidding me!

[monkey]

When we're reporting on that team, we'll call it Washington.

That's great. And we Washingtonians will continue to call you "place where airplanes dump their chemical toilets."

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

The one team you never hear any complaints about is Florida State - they pay the Seminole nation for the right to use their name. As El Rushbo always says, follow the bucks!

[JimVT]

Readers of this PC rag should be on the lookout for such racist expressions as "a chink in his armor"; "don't put that gook in your hair" and recipes with "sauerkraut."

[gridlock]

Reminds me of an old joke news article from about the time that Washington's basketball team changed it's name.

WASHINGTON D.C. The Washington Bullets basketball team has announced that they are going to change their name because their image has become associated with urban violence. Henceforth they will be known simply as "The Bullets".

[Phantom Lord]

What will they refer to the Syracuse Orangemen as?

[jiggyboy]

George Carlin says that "The Fighting Irish" is about as sterotypical is it gets. "Why not 'The Bargaining Jews'?"

[SerfsUp]

From George Orwell's "Principles of Newspeak", an appendix to 1984:

"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought...should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever."