Sigh of relief
We got through another one. I’m always shocked at how many times bad deals like Jones-Bedard stall or fail because of weird sticking points (like Omar’s knees).
“I’d like to trade you my house and everything in it, my brand new Dodge Viper with secret lifetime speeding ticket immunity pass, and $100,000 for that disposable pen you have there.”
“You’ll have to throw in those shoes you’re wearing.”
“What, my shoes? Never! Why, I bought these at Costco and they’ve been adequate for six months!”
“No deal unless I get those shoes!”
“Fine! I’ll just keep all my stuff!”
“You do that!”
May this whole thing fall apart similarly, so that years from now we can laugh about the whole thing.
The big news today is the Indians cut a deal to name Jacobs Field “Progressive Field” like the auto insurance company that once called me at o-dark-thirty in the morning because they didn’t understand the concept of time zones.
As several people emailed me to note, it’s at least incongruous that a company named Progressive will now sponsor the stadium of a team that, while run by a progressive front office, has for a logo Chief Wahoo, by far the most embarrassingly racist of any major sports team in America today.
Wheeee!
Shortbus, well said. There is a terrific riff by Smokey Robinson that was a Def Poetry Jam session in which he called himself “Black” and said that “African-Americans” are people from Africa, not Black Americans.
And I wish I didn’t know, comprehend, and laugh at the comment on “Bears.”
Ehhh…pass.
Yeah, well…this is a country where substantial portions don’t think nooses and lynching have racial connotations for other parts of the country…
The word Yankee is just as derogatory as Redskin, but you won’t ever hear that from organizations like the NAACP or the organization that represents Native Americans.
The Yankee reservation on the upper east side of Manhattan seems a bit nicer than the Indian reservation at Pine Ridge, but to each his own.
The funny thing about the white southerner with his cherished stars and bars is usually the same guy who wants to “move on, not dwell on the past” when you bring up things like this. (In fact, so great is the urge to forget that photos like that were almost lost forever).
I still think this should be Cleveland’s logo.
Joser, I’m not sure how the white southerner with the Confederate flag relates to your picture from the civil rights movement. It seems a bit like your remarking that a Muslim Saudi Arabian immigrant should be forced to respond in some manner — perhaps asking to “move on, not dwell on the past” — when being asked to view an image from 9/11. What does that immigrant have to do with 9/11 other than being from the same country as many of the malfeasors, acting ostensibly under color of a religion? What does a Civil War battle flag have to do with cops beating a guy during a protest in the 50s, other than being from groups of people who, you assume, have some of the same attitudes toward race relations? See where I’m going with this?
Writing that kind of tripe may get you some approving head-nods at your local herb cooperative, and perhaps even earn you an A in your undergraduate Sociology class at UW, but that doesn’t mean that it will stand up to any kind of intellectual rigor by anyone with a scintilla of intelligence (not that I, particularly at 1:30 AM, claim to make use of it here).
By the way, not everyone who disagrees with the predominantly left-leaning view here is ignorant, nor is their lack of agreement with you “sad” or evidence of “how far we still need to go.” Rather, the alienation and patronizing attitudes toward them, in my view, is evidence of how far this country has slid from its founding principles (and, to the extent this is some kind of quasi-academic discussion, from academic freedom to make unpopular arguments and to have them given fair consideration and analysis — no, comment #31, that is not analysis).
I’m glad to see that we could have the quarterly anti-racism blog posting this early in the year, perhaps allowing us to make it all the way to Opening Day before we have to read another.
Aaaaand I think we’ve let the topic drift far enough, now.
Hey, hey!
It’s 1:10 on the east coast, and no word of a trade! We’re getting dangerously close to extended the streak, as Angelos is sure to be going down for his mid afternoon nap soon.
42.”Ten years ago people were not offended.
That’s simply not true. I remember the Atlanta Braves coming under criticism for their name when they made the WS in 1991, and that was 16 years ago.”
It goes back much farther than that, people have been trying, sometimes successfully, to get sports teams to change their names or logos since at least the 1970s. A high school in Pekin, IL changed its team name in 1981, after years of protests.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/levesque/106471_leve30.shtml
Anyone who thinks this started 10 years ago has simply not been paying attention to … well to a lot of things. The news (or history if you weren’t born yet) for one, as well as the history of ethnic oppression in this country (and the world too, I’m not saying the US is worse than other countries, in fact it’s probably better than most in this regard — but far from perfect).
you know, this whole ” consecutive days without a bad move” thing is very subjective.
some people might actually find the miguel cairo signing to be an idiotic move.
Wow that’s totally awesome except that I talked about why it’s not thanks though.