OPINION:
The absurdity of the completely inflated and illusory furor over the Washington Redskins’ name was brought home to me during a recent interview with a team supporter on ITV News here in the U.K. (“After 87 years, Redskins retired,” Page 1, July 14). The fan was full of praise for the erasure of the Redskins, but when the interviewer asked what the team should be called instead he seemed utterly flummoxed, flailing around helplessly before coming up lamely with “Uh … Warriors.” You could tell he knew himself it was a blandly generic and insipid title shared by a thousand other middle-school touch-football teams. It was not one to fire you up for winning the Super Bowl.
In fact, why stop with just the Redskins half of the name? It is fashionable among liberals to condemn America’s first president — a statue to George Washington was defaced in Baltimore during the Black Lives Matter riots. How long until “Washington” itself attracts leftist ire for glorifying whiteness or slave owning or some such?
The political purity tests will never end. There will always be another confected outrage to humiliate the team as the “woke” exercise their power. By kowtowing to the Twitter mob, The Football Team Formerly Known As the Washington Redskins is making itself the laughingstock of the sporting world.
ROBERT FRAZER
Lancashire, United Kingdom
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