It's time for the worst NFL owner to have his celebrity again. Yes, it's Daniel Snyder's time to shine.
Snyder has been the principal owner of the Washington Re*sk*ns pro football team since 1999. This season, Snyder's team went 4-12 - for a walloping .250 winning percentage. They really outdid themselves, too - last year the Re*ski*ns went 3-13.
With an overall record of 105 wins and 140 losses since the days of grunge and big-hair rock & roll, maybe Snyder should consider selling his team to a very wealthy old rocker who knows one or two things about football. Hey, didn't Pink Floyd record a song way back when about "buying a football team"? And hopefully, this celebrated musician - whoever he or she may turn out to be - will be an owner with a magnanimous and sensitive personality and consider ditching that that horrid racist name, Re*sk*ns!
Snyder is always in the spotlight during the off-season. His refusal to change the name of his team keeps the media tuned into him and his jackass-whispering commentary. He's always making some sort of wave, sometimes bordering on a tsunami, when he goes behind the camera or involves himself with some sort of issue. It's Daniel Snyder's nature to be exactly who he is - Daniel Snyder.
Fifty-year old Snyder, who has an estimated worth of $1.73 billion, according to Forbes, has become the NFL's, and possibly even the entire sports world's, most controversial sports figure.
He refuses to rename his team's mascot, that's why. And to American Indians, having the name of a scalp scraped from the skull of an Indian, whether it be a child, woman, or man, is an outrage. Scalping, by the way, is a form of torture and murder that white settlers and pioneers used to slaughter Indians. Each scalp was kept and sold later as some deranged and depraved bounty. It was a blunt way of saying, "I killed another Indian" and it was a very cruel way to kill someone and a very miserable and painful way to die.
But Daniel Snyder has done a lot of jackass whispering about the name of his team. To Snyder, everything's hunky dory, okie-dokie, fine & dandy: "The name was never a label. It was, and continues to be, a badge of honor," Snyder is quoted as saying on the Mother Jones website.
Another ridiculous quote uttered by Snyder in the same Mother Jones article: "It (the Re*sk*ns name) is a symbol of everything we stand for: strength, courage, pride, and respect - the same values we know guide Native Americans and which are embedded throughout their rich history as the original Americans."
Snyder filed a $1 million defamation lawsuit against the Washington City Paper in the spring of 2011, making him look like the nasty creep to the home crowd that he's always appeared to be in Indian land. And ironically, this racist, this Snyder guy, had the unmitigated gall of claiming that an etching on the cover of the Washington City Paper was a racial slam to Jewish people. WHAT???!!!. Danny Boy, the Washington City Paper cover is not lampooning your "Jewishness," this much is obvious - they're parodying you for being Satan himself. It's not a depiction of a Jewish guy with those horns growing out of your picture and the evil-looking mustache and goatee.
Any sane, rational, compassionate person would change the name, work on pumping up his team to play on the football field rather in the venues of the media and public opinion, and let things go at this. Not Snyder, though - he's sticking to that foul, disgusting, demeaning name.
Forbes lists Snyder as their No. 9 worst NFL owner, behind: Malcolm Glazer, owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (No. 8); the Hunt family, owner of the Kansas City Chiefs (No. 7); Wayne Weaver, owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars (No. 6); Mike Brown, owner of the Cincinnati Bengals (No. 5); Randy Weaver, owner of the Cleveland Browns (No. 4); Ralph Wilson Jr., owner of the Buffalo Bills (No. 3); Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders (No.2); and the worst of the worst: William Clay Ford Sr., owner of the Detroit Lions (No. 1).
According to the Forbes slideshow, Pat Bowlen, owner of the Denver Bronocs (No. 10), was the last name on the terrible team tyrants' list. The three best owners include: the Mara & Tisch Families, owners of the New York Giants (No. 1); Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots (No. 2); and James Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts (No. 3).
Next year, all those chicken-feathered-festooned, headdress-wearing fools will be back in the stands of FedExField - the most preposterous and loathsome of all culture vultures.
According to the Huffington Post, from an early December online blog offering written by two anthropologists:
We as anthropologists have documented the personal pain, ostracism, and societal hardship that racism creates for Native Americans.
We call on Dan Snyder to retire the name -- it is a racial slur that must be abandoned.
Nationwide, many agree with us. In June 2014, the U.S. Patent Office canceled six registered team trademarks. Their reason: the term is "disparaging."
How do slurs hurt? They create a climate that degrades a whole segment of the population, rather than fostering an inclusive, respectful environment. Most Native Americans are tired of public habits that take advantage of their distinctiveness only to exclude them personally from real dialogue on fair and appropriate public representation.
A whole litany of other organizations, political and religious leaders, glitterati, and even the United Nations have condemned the name the Jackass Whisperer insists on keeping for his NFL franchise.
Daniel Snyder, it's time for you to change the name or get out of the game. Of course, if you do both, this will make a lot more people happy than if you simply ditch the Re*sk*ns slur.
