DEPARTMENTS
ANTI-WAR
DEATH PENALTY
ELECTIONS
ENVIRONMENT
GLBT ISSUES
HEMP
INTERNATIONAL
NATIONAL
REVIEWS
Columns Harvey WassermanHas Chief Wahoo again cursed Cleveland? July 9, 2010 Another tomahawk has sailed into the hearts of Cleveland sports fans. Is it the work of Chief Wahoo, the most racist logo in all of sports? Has the ridiculous, buck-toothed profoundly offensive caricature of a single-feathered native poked yet another hole Cleveland's soul? Mark Welch, part Ho-de-no-sau-nee (Iroquois) and part Lakota (Sioux) might say so. Mark is a mainstay of the native community in Ohio's capital. For years he's joined other activists when the season opens in Cleveland. They picket in protest of a cartoon they find deeply offensive. In response, Cleveland Indian fans throw beer at them. It's time to reconsider. The departure of LeBron James from the Cavaliers is a death blow. Barring a miracle, no major sports franchise in this tough, depressed lake town has even a remote shot at a league title in the near future. Not since the glory days of the football Browns and their great running back, Jim Brown, has there been a champion in Cleveland. The Browns and Cavs have both threatened since. The Indians twice came within a run of winning the World Series. The details are too heartbreaking to recount. How about a name change? How about dumping that logo? How about a pow wow with the native community to find a new spirit and image? It's been a welcome, long overdue trend in college sports. It'd give Cleveland something---ANYTHING!!!---to talk about beside LeBron's jump to the beach. While at Syracuse, Jim Brown played Lacrosse with the great Ho-de-no-sau-nee spiritual leader Oren Lyons. Let's get him and Jim together, organize a transformation of the name, face and soul of Cleveland baseball, and move on. A public renaming would be a magnificent gesture at a time like this. An act of contrition, and of grace. Our nation's capital could then strip the "Redskins" off that football team, an unconscionable epithet in this day and age. Along the way, of course, we'd like to see communities finally own the sports teams whose billionaire speculators demand free stadiums, huge tax breaks and the right to abuse the fans who love them with reckless abandon. But in the meantime....how about it, Cleveland?....let's bury Chief Wahoo! We can be absolutely certain that whatever comes next will be better. Mitakuye Oyasin. -- HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE US is at www.harveywasserman.com. Email this article to a friend |
|
"Another astonishing holiday no new nukes victory" "Our gay Commander-in-Chief" "A $7 billion new nuke attack" "Afghanistan is about perpetual war" "America's eggshell nukes" "Vermont's great green election day victory " "Legal Marijuana or Bust!!!" "Hemp is the hidden key to legal marijuana" "Reactor "renaissance" flies off another cliff" "A solar victory & military defeat at the White House" "Hey Tea/GOP: Ben Franklin's NOT your guy!" "Another feeble-headed nuke drops dead " "Is the "nuclear renaissance" dead yet?" "Glenn Beck could happen here " "To honor Dr. King bring the troops home NOW!!" "Pete Seeger's new music video for Solartopia! will open at American Renewable Energy Day" "Pete Seeger speaks and sings for Solartopia!" "Why Stewart Brand is wrong on nukes---and is losing " "Has Chief Wahoo again cursed Cleveland?" "Can "emergency" new nuke loans be stopped despite cover of war?" "Fire McChrystal & get out of Afghanistan NOW" "Corporate apocalypse vs. Solartopian survival" "Apocalypse in the Gulf now (oil) & next (nukes)" "Will an "emergency" military vote tomorrow fund more nukes?" "Don't Ask, Don't Tell if George Washington was gay" "BP's nuke-powered liability cap " "As we die for BP, our military rots in the wrong Gulf" "The triple curse of the corporate climate bill" "Chernobyl demands a REAL climate bill" "Will the climate bill nuke Earth Day?" "YOU are now paying for the NEXT 3 Mile Island " "Nuke pushers to Vermont: "Drop Dead"" "In NYTimes: Voting-machine flaws and paper ballots" "$645 MILLION in lipstick for a dead radioactive pig" "Obama's atomic blunder" "Our founders were NOT fundamentalists" "Vermont's radioactive nightmare" "Will Obama guarantee a new reactor war?" "How the great Howard Zinn made all our lives better" "The Weimar Democrats" "Two from the Green hard core" "A blue-moon baby-boom 64th Solartopian birthday" Read Articles by Year: |
FREE PRESS EMAIL UPDATE
Donate to the Free Press Election Protection Fund to help us investigate and monitor election fraud in this year's election.
FOLLOW US ON
twitter
facebook
SEARCH THE FREEPRESS
1021 E. Broad St. Columbus, OH 43205 | 614.253.2571 | truth@freepress.org
All content © 1970-2012 The Columbus Free Press
Disclaimer