First, while the team name "Indians," and the colloquial "Tribe," aren't racist — at least not from where I stand — the Wahoo logo is. It indulges in a variety of physical stereotyping, some of which have been applied by whites in America to other racial or ethnic groups as well. And the Cleveland Indians, like the Washington Redskins, have generally as a corporation resisted addressing the issue. (I've become more sensitive to such things since the last time Cleveland was in the World Series.)
And, I even Tweeted LeBron James, asking how, with his active support for Black Lives Matter, he can support a team with a racist mascot. One word from him might actually propel change. That's not guaranteed, but it certainly is possible.
On the flip side, we have the Chicago Cubs.
As I joked on social media last Saturday, the Cubs last got to the World Series in 1945 — the year World War II ended. And now, native Chicagoan and warhawk Hillary Clinton is running for president.
To complete one version of the joke, I said that the only way people could stop World War III was to vote Green for Dr. Jill Stein for president. Some people on Zuckerbook didn't like the joke, including the non-joking truth of Hillary as warhawk.
Worse yet is the saccharine in which this will be draped.
Joe Buck and John Smoltz in the broadcast booth will yammer until the cows come home about how America loves an underdog.
No it doesn't, at least not totally, or in and of itself. That myth is a hoary part of American exceptionalism.
Americans love an underdog only in the Horatio Alger sense, of how it supposedly proves social and other mobility is uniquely possible in America.
No it isn't.
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