Offensive Team Names and GUIDs
Not long ago while driving with my NPR loving wife I was accidentally exposed to a radio panel “conversation”1 about offensive team names. Unless you’ve been off-planet for the last few decades you’re probably aware that it’s no longer acceptable to name teams after BIPOC’ky2 people. To do so is to commit the heinous crime of cultural appropriation. How naming a football team the “Redskins” or a hockey team the “Blackhawks” steals culture is not entirely clear but trust me it is. BIPOC’ky people are incapable of error. Their opinions, however nonsensical, are absolute and must not be questioned, especially by pasty, pink people — you know racist white guys. This is the prevailing NPR orthodoxy and the radio panel, comprised of a meek approval-seeking host, and two sullen aboriginal youths (Indian teenagers) accepted it without a trace of introspection.
The panel went on way too long about the youth’s struggle to rename high school basketball teams and their refusal to stand up and recite The Pledge of Allegiance. I fully sympathized with their take on The Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a creepy loyalty oath that induces more nausea than loyalty. I hated chanting it as a kid and nobody was forcing me onto a reservation. Unthinking loyalty is a bad look for sentient beings.
