WhatFinger


And a Democrat congresswoman is driving all of it

U of Minnesota to Vikings: Don't let visiting Redskins display their name or logo



You know, being a fan of the Minnesota Vikings is difficult enough just based on what happens on the field. We're 0-4 in Super Bowls. We've got to deal with the stomach-curdling memories of the 1999 NFC Championship Game, not to mention 41-doughnut in the same game two years later, and the bounty-hunting Saints putting out a contract on Brett Favre in 2010.
But on a cultural level . . . hey, what the heck did we do? We were just sitting here minding our own business. First we got stuck with a petulant, attention-mongering punter who couldn't and can't let go of the fact that his skills declined and decided to turn his own release into a confrontation about gay marriage. Go away forever, Chris Kluwe! And now, all we did was receive our schedule for the NFL and see that it showed a November 2 home game against the Washington Redskins. What? What did we do? Doesn't matter. The culture wars are everywhere, and it doesn't matter if your team is not named after a protected grievance class of people (which blond-haired Norse warriors are surely not). You're getting sucked in anyway! So the Vikings, who are playing their home games this year and next at the University of Minnesota's TCF Bank Stadium while their own new downtown stadium is being built, are coming under pressure from the university president to somehow prevent the Redskins name or logo from being seen or even spoken about during that November 2. And not surprisingly, this originates in Congress, where a Democrat is pressuring U of M President Eric W. Kaler to put the heat on the Vikings to put the heat on the Redskins. Yeah, I'm getting dizzy too. That's how ridiculous this has become:

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The school is not the only entity pressuring the Vikings. Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum (D) sent a letter in June to Vikings owner Zygi Wilf urging him to condemn the Redskins' team name and suggested he bears some responsibility to take a stand because NFL teams equally split the sales of every team's licensed merchandise. McColllum's letter was carbon copied to the University of Minnesota's president, Eric W. Kaler. He replied to her last week. Joel Barkin, the spokesman for the Oneida Indian Nation, which has worked with McCollum frequently in its campaign against the team's name, applauded the school's proactive stance and said the word should be banned at professional stadiums, too. "Many of these professional stadiums receive large forms of public subsidies, so we plan on writing to each of the teams to follow the lead of Minnesota," Barkin said. "It's inappropriate for taxpayers to be subsidizing the endorsement of a racial slur."
So now it's the responsibility of the Vikings, who are not named after an Indian and had nothing to do with or say about which teams ended up on their home schedule, to make sure the Redskins wear uniforms with no hint whatsoever of their name, logo or identity? And not only that, but to see to it that no Redskins jerseys are sold in the stadium, and that the name "Redskins" is never mentioned over the P.A. system? What do they plan to do if Redskins fans visiting from out of town try to enter the stadium wearing jerseys or other gear sporting the name or logo of the team? Are the Vikings supposed to forbid them entry? (If we were talking about fans of the team from the village whose two-letter name starts with the same letters as "garbage bin," I would be in total support, but that's different.) By the way, you see in the quote above from Joel Barkin what a truly insidious game the left plays here. We touched last week on one of the understated dangers of the growth of government, which is that when more and more people and institutions are either receiving taxpayer funding or taxpayer-funded contracts, it gives the people at the levers of government an excuse to try to control everything they do and say - based on the idea that "hey, taxpayers are funding this so we can't allow . . ." whatever it is they don't want to allow. Oh yeah yeah yeah, you have free speech and all, but not if we're funding you! So make sure government funds everything, and constitutional rights become strictly theoretical. The left clearly intends to win this Redskins battle by becoming such a pain in the # that the NFL just has to raise the surrender flag to put all the nonsense to bed. Just about every stadium in the NFL has received some sort of taxpayer funding, so what they're doing in Minnesota is just the beginning. They'll do it everywhere, eventually getting to the point where teams will groan when they see the Redskins on their schedule, knowing the nonsense they'll have to deal with from idiot activists who have no reason to stop until they get what they want. Sigh. Lord, if we have to put up with all this, would it be OK with you if we please win the Super Bowl this year? Thank you.


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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