What's On The Label

These are, as my wife will tell you, the high holy days of football. Having only recently concluded the last of the eighty-seven major college bowl games in anticipation of the World Championship of non-professional football, culminating in the crowning of the team that gets to eat fast food with the "president," we find ourselves feasting on the buffet that is the tournament setting up the Super Bowl. I mention my wife in this equation because she gets a little wistful around this time of year. She realizes that soon my weekends will give way  to more focused adoration on her instead of those sweaty men on the television. And football.
This year the playoff teams include the Titans, the Packers, the Texans, the Seahawks, the Ravens, the the Forty-Niners, the Vikings and the Chiefs. This brings to mind the challenge that continues to exist in the National Football League regarding ethnic stereotypes being used for mascots. Has anyone considered now the Norse feel about having their birthright slandered in this way? Okay. Maybe not. But the fact that the Kansas City Chiefs continue to slide on by with fans whooping and making their tomahawk chops evades me. It's 2020. Couldn't they choose some sort of local attribute to supplant this image?  The Kansas City Ribs, perhaps?
Bringing me to the struggle our country continues to have adapting to change: change of the  most  superficial nature. In Killingly, Connecticut this year the local school board chose to change their high school's mascot from the Redmen to the Redhawks. Students didn't have a problem with it. But their parents did. When the members of the school board were up for re-election in the fall, they were unceremoniously dumped in order to give Republicans an edge that allowed them to reinstate the team's mascot. Jason Muscara, one of the new Republican board members, insisted, “I recognize there have been many Native Americans who have voiced those concerns. But I would say there is an equal amount of Native people who feel the opposite.” Prior to this dustup, Mister Muscara had a little trouble distancing himself from his previous association with The American Guard, a group described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a general hate group." I suspect that the number of native people interviewed by Jason number approximately zero. 
And to think this whole  thing could  have been  avoided if they would have just gone ahead and called themselves The Killingly Racists.