The Cleveland Haemosporidians?

 

The Cleveland Indians will always be the Cleveland Indians for me. The Indians’ mascot will always be Chief Wahoo.  But over at PJ Media, Robert Spencer explains what's really going on:

With skyrocketing crime and inflation, a steady exodus of sane people from her state, and test scores of students in the state plummeting, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-Planned Parenthood) and her henchmen have turned their attention to the most burning issue of our day: sports team mascots that offend the woke. Now New York’s remaining residents can look around at their smoking ruin of a state, as they watch the people who broke into their house drive off in their car and console themselves with the thought that nowhere in their formerly green and pleasant land is anyone being traumatized because there’s a sports team around called the “Indians.”

The Albany Times-Union reported Tuesday that “the New York Board of Regents has officially banned all uses of images and names for school mascots related to indigenous people.” At this late date in the woke-ification of America, there wasn’t even any controversy over this: “The board voted unanimously Tuesday morning, without discussion.”

This was the culmination of a process that has been going on for a good while: “The proposal was announced by the state Education Department in November, and education officials have been urging school boards to begin the process to change mascot images and names ever since.” Why is anyone on the New York Board of Regents paying attention to this matter at all? Because, you see, fans of teams called the Indians and Chiefs and Braves and even Redskins never realized it, but all the time they were rooting for their teams, they were really indulging in an act of hate.

In the Left’s view, you see, people name their sports teams after things they despise. 

. . .

The war against mascots is also completely inconsistent. There are ongoing efforts to force the Minnesota Vikings to change their name because the name “Viking” supposedly glorifies colonialism and white supremacism. But if the “Viking” name glorifies whiteness, why don’t the “Chief” or “Warrior” or “Indian” names glorify Native Americans? The war against mascots is, in other words, simply another Leftist effort to make Americans generally ashamed of their own culture and heritage. A nation that is ashamed won’t have the will to defend itself. . . .

Read the rest here. 

Exit question:  In the interest of keeping fans ashamed of themselves and their team, why did not the Tribe owners select The Cleveland Worms instead of the Cleveland Guardians?  Or, if it was important to keep “dians” in the new name, well then, how about

The Cleveland Haemosporidians?

(For utterly fascinating information about the “avian haemosporidian parasite,” click here.)

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Chief Wahoo on unemployment

To follow up on yesterday's news announcing the Cleveland Guardians, here's the Babylon Bee with another good one:

Unemployment Up 800% Among Ethnic Mascots

And from Paula Bolyard at PJ Media:

RIP Cleveland Indians:
Brave New Name Will Honor Traffic Pillars
on a Crumbling Bridge

. . . The name change depresses me. I’m sad that my grandkids will never know the joy of cheering for the Cleveland Indians—like their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents before them. If they even bother to watch the team, they’ll be cheering for a stupid traffic pillar. I feel the same way I did when Art Modell up and moved the Cleveland Brown to Baltimore in 1995, leaving fans with an empty stadium and the rights to the name. A part of our collective history died that day and the team has never really recovered. “The Move” joined a long and storied line of disappointments for Cleveland fans (there’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the topic). But it’s more than just the Indians’ name change. Our history is being erased by a small minority of noisy activists, statue by statue, logo by logo, name by name. They’re using 1984 as an instruction manual to shove our entire history down the Memory Hole. Meanwhile, their fellow travelers are inundating our schools with fake history, heavy on social manipulation and light on education.

I refuse to accept the premise that I’m a racist because I love the Cleveland Indians—the name, the logo, and Chief Wahoo. I’m sick and tired of having my motives called into question at every turn because of my skin color. I will never EVER cheer for the Cleveland Guardians. Instead, I’ll join the many loyal Tribe fans who will no doubt continue to cheer for the Indians. And we’ll wear our black-market Wahoo gear proudly, celebrating the history of the team and the bravery of our Native American brothers and sisters.

I grew up with the Cleveland Indians, and when I read the change to “Guardians” – I made no connection between that name and these “guardians on the Hope Memorial bridge.  No, it's just another politically correct decision that will sadden and irritate the fans. 

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