Wait---WHAT'S THAT ON THE JERSEY??? NOOOOOOOO!!!!
The Houston Astros will be celebrating their 50th anniversary this baseball season. It hasn’t been a great half-century for the Astros—the team only made it to one World Series and lost in a four game sweep; its stadium was once named “Enron Field,” and the team was responsible for the introduction of fake grass to the sport—but they are still here, and that’s something. The planned celebration was to include the release of authentic jerseys from the first edition of the team in 1962, when they were called the Houston Colt 45’s. The 2012 Astros were going to play a game in those jerseys, but Major League Baseball decreed that the original logo couldn’t appear on the shirt—because it was a pistol.
This is the kind of political correctness nonsense that borders on attempted mind-control. Treating pictures of guns as if they are some kind of cultural contagion is not only offensive and silly, in this case it is air-brushing history. The original logo was what it was. A picture of a gun is quite appropriate, since the team was named after a gun. Honestly—what lunatic came up with this edict, and how come he or she wasn’t thrown into a padded room?
Fortunately, the backlash against the censorship was immediate and overwhelming, and baseball saw the light, ruling that it was the team’s choice what the jerseys should look like. Don’t mock this as a lot of gun nuts going off half-cocked either: anyone who cares about stopping the mind-police before they get the upper hand should have been lobbying for the old logo whether they like the Second Amendment or not.
This is nothing, really; if only every battle against the kind, gentle, make-this-a-better-world-by-making-it-impossible-to-think-or-say-things-we-disapprove-of political correctness fanatics could be won so easily. But the little victories count, and every setback these dangerous, undemocratic and doctrinaire individuals suffer makes their gray world of benign conformity a little less attainable.
Ethics Alarms 
I will never understand why some people have the idea that suppressing the depiction or mention of something is tantamount to suppressing the thing itself.
I once worked in a retail store with an oddly eclectic musical playlist that I was treated/subjected to every shift, and at one point I realized that a recurring rock song had the word “drugs” removed from the lyrics of its refrain. I was baffled by the motivation behind this. Did they fear that children in the store would somehow be aurally corrupted and feel compelled to start using drugs simply by virtue of having heard the word mentioned offhandedly by Nickelback? And why weren’t the same people concerned about the children being corrupted just by hearing Nickelback? The lyric did not in any way promote the use of drugs; it simply implied that they were a common feature of the rock lifestyle, which I think is rather difficult to deny. In fact, I’m certain that no one in the store who was old enough to know what drugs were was not already aware of the fact that rock stars often use them. And if anyone wasn’t old enough to know what drugs were, the song playing over the PA system certainly wasn’t going to teach them that.
The store also played a hip-hop song that was popular at the time, which included as part of the music a string of several sound effects, including the cocking and repeated firing of a gun. In an act far more absurd than blanking out the word “drugs,” they actually removed the sound of the weapon from that song, leaving it with a refrain that consisted of one lyric followed by about two seconds of silence and then the next lyric. What can this sort of censorship possibly hope to accomplish? Unless they were worried about customers initially perceiving the sound effects as actual gun shots, which I seriously doubt they were, they weren’t protecting anyone from anything. The music wouldn’t have conveyed any information or point of view, so it wasn’t offensive, much less dangerous or corrupting.
It’s powerfully irrational to think that suppressing a song lyric, a picture on a jersey, or a sound effect will result in the community being insulated from actual drugs, actual guns, or actual violence. Neither depiction nor reference is the same as glorification or advocacy. And in fact, anything that suppresses depiction also suppresses open dialogue, which increases the risks posed by lack of education and awareness. Who could possibly think that preventing people from talking about things will also prevent them from desiring them or doing them?
Do these kinds of people just sit around all day poring over news,literature,etc. to find something to nit pick about? Do they strain their brains trying to wring something offensive out of the benign? Don’t they have anything better to do than try to make us walk on eggshells?
I’d love to see many more small victories.
Dittos, Karla – wonderfully pointed questions.
Sensitivity is one excellent possible outcome of truly ethical progressive education that enables constructive cultural development. But when sensitivity is mal-educated, such that the taking of offense is merely another lever in a toolkit of ideological and cultural imperialism, the suppressive and oppressive forces that are naturally enabled from the development of such a toolkit must be opposed and overwhelmed, or else many historical horrors will be repeated.
Eeyoure,I suspected there was a connection but I hadn’t thought out the purpose. Thanks.
I was just reminiscing about the Colt .45’s with a local Facebook friend when I accessed this entry. Good God… the .45 Peacemaker is practically a SYMBOL of Texas. I hate to think how many Texans still carry one and swear by it. Yet, MLB worries about it? They’ve got a lot more than an old logo to worry about, I’d say.
Boy, this one really burns me. There are a lot of far more pressing issues, of course! This one, though, is close to being personal.
Shared that one on Facebook, Jack.
wow….the pc myopia reminds me of reading “The Golden Bough,” a 19th century treatise on human mythology, magic and superstition. The chapter on magic contained the well known concept that symbols, ie something that looks like something IS that thing. Some of these people seem to have nothing better to do than look for symbols of something they disdain and to treat it like it’s real rather than a respresentation.
I wonder what they think about the Buffalo Sabres hockey team? Should they get a new, less violent name?
Washington DC is much less dangerous today since its NBA franchise dropped the team name “Bullets” and became Wizards. Or not.
My favorite irresponsible sports team name change of all time. They replaced Bullets with the title of the head of the KKK, in a 90% African-American city. Good thinking, DC.
I wonder if the perennial push to re-name the Capital area NFL team something besides “Redskins” has reared-up again – or WHEN it will rear-up again. I remember reading years ago about the history of that team. I wish I could remember better, or had time to re-learn. But, unless my memory is incorrect, I came away from learning that team’s history realizing that re-naming them would lead to permanent obliteration of some remarkable historical truths, specifically with regard to the name.
I suppose that, if West Virginia had a pro basketball team, they’d name them the Kleagles… in honor of their late Senator! I’m told by a local friend that the MLB bunch may have backed off from that diktat against the Colt .45 motif. I certainly hope so. The talk here about the Washington Redskins recalls to me another outrageous PC directive that came from the NCAA. The one about team names reflecting American Indians. I understand that they’re (at last) considering abandoning this. North Dakota U. (Souix) and Illinois (Fightin’ Illini)- among others- simply ignored them. McMurray College TX (once the Indians) has been without a team name ever since. Apparently it never dawned on these wackos that such names are intended to honor Native Americans.
At my own alma mater, the Shippensburg Red Raiders were renamed to just the “Raiders”, with the native-american head in profile symbol (it looked kind of like what you see on a so-called “Indian head” penny) replaced by a cartoonish pirate ship. http://www.ship.edu
Arrrrr, we’re a bunch of scary pirates here in the middle of Pennsylvania, 200 miles from the ocean. THAT makes sense, mateys!
–Dwayne
I recall the case of Stanford University. Once known as the Indians, they dropped the name in an early fit of liberal lunacy. All they suceeded in doing, though, was putting out of a job an old Indian of a local tribe who used to do an authentic war dance on the side lines. They ought to take these knuckleheads and keelhaul ’em!
The probelms is that some Native Americans dont see it as an honor. But then calling a team by tribes name in my opinion can be as you have stated seen as honoring them but the name of the Redskins is nothing but a racist insult and always has been.
It’s a racist term, but it is not used as a denigrating term when it is the name of a beloved institution. Bottom line: people don’t name things that they love after people they hate. That’s always been the logical disconnect at the core of these protests. Does Boston hate the Celtics…the Irish? Does New England hate patriots, and New York hate yankees? Any sports team nickname is by definition positive in context.
And you do know that “Redskins” was originally meant to symbolize the Boston Braves football team’s move from the Boston Braves baseball field to Fenway Park, right? “We can’t call them “the Braves” when they are playing in Fenway—wait a minute! Red SOX..Red SKINS!!! Get it? Problem solved!”
“Brilliant, Finsterwald! You are such a clever lad!!!”
They should have changed the name when the team moved from Boston to Washington.
Ok. I see your point but the word itself if used in a one on one interaction with a Native American most likely would be seen as being racist.
Absolutely.
It also explains why there are no teams called the “Dagos,” “Kikes” or “Spics.” The football team’s name was devised in a context where race and nationality wasn’t even being thought about—they just wanted a link to the baseball team with “Red” in its name, without having to change all of the Braves graphics.
Jack, what I remember (vaguely, sorry!) reading about the DC football team’s history was something specific about a particular man of “earlier nations’ ” ancestry, perhaps “geneologically pure,” who was instrumental in setting up the franchise in DC.
I actually had not known that the team re-located from Boston to DC, and honestly, previously knew nothing about the connection to Boston. The move must’ve been in the…1930s? Thanks for the additional history.
Found what I believe I was looking for – details under the subheading, “What is a Redskin?” (Seeing the name Dietz immediately reminded me.)
http://www.truthaboutit.net/2008/08/washington-redskins-and-stigma-of.html
As we might expect, the history is somewhat of a “mist-ery.”
The thirties. Everything in Boston sports ends up relating to the Red Sox.
The guy who moved the team to Washington was named Marshall.
What about Notre Dame? I mean, how stereotypical can you get. Their team is the Irish and their logo and mascot is a drunken, belligerent leprechaun.
Jack, you need to make a significant correction. The Astros/former Colt 45s DID go to the 2005 World Series – the only time they won that far along – but were swept by the Chicago White Sox.
YIKES! I apologize to Astros fans. I was so bummed out by the Red Sox getting eliminated that I tuned out that whole post-season. I fixed it. Thanks.
And to the White Sox!! The Astros will never live it down.
Steven, I believe you are on to something there. The 2005 Astros had six, possibly seven, future Hall of Famers (or, that many with HOF talent, anyway) on their roster – and still they got swept: Biggio, Bagwell, Berkman, Beltran (possibly), Clemens (scandals – oh well!), Pettitte, and Lidge. With failure like that, it’s fair to expect the Cubs to win three World Series (in a row, even) before the Astros ever get another chance. On the other hand, I enjoyed watching that fine, deserving ’05 White Sox team.
It took the Astros to lift the curse!
Whew! If the Braves had been allowed to keep their tomahawks this could have changed everything!
When this PC on hyper drive is used in public schools it leaves the children ill equipped to deal with the real world. Society isn’t going to hand you a hanky when your feelings get hurt. If you wear a sign saying “kick me” you’ll get kicked.
Well put, Karla.
But what about the children? The children of Texas might discover that guns exist! I would love to see the face of the (probably Northeasterner) MLB official that in Texas, the children not only know that firearms exist, they own and shoot them.
Discover them? Texas is the place where the term “gunslinging” was invented! Except (now) in urban areas where insane educators rule, boys still learn to shoot as soon as they’re big enough to heft a few pounds of ironmongery. National pride… and all that.