What's in a Nickname?
August 30, 2001

by Joe Sobran

     Does PC stand for Politically Correct, or Plumb 
Crazy? Sometimes you have to wonder.

     The hot topic in Montgomery County, Maryland, is the 
local school board's decision that Poolesville High 
School must give up its sports teams' nickname, the 
Indians. It seems the nickname is demeaning to ... oh, 
you know the line.

     In May, 60 per cent of the people of Poolesville 
voted to keep the nickname. It doesn't violate any laws 
or even transgress against the countless corollaries the 
federal judiciary has found lurking in the penumbras 
emanating from the U.S. Constitution. Even most local 
Indians don't seem to mind it.

     But leave it to liberal government officials to 
militate on behalf of "sensitivity," a word that keeps 
cropping up in rationales for the dictate. Some people 
make careers of taking offense, even vicariously. The 
tinier the matter you can take offense at, the more 
refined your sympathies for the accredited victim 
classes.

     One distressing exercise of sensitivity, in this 
baneful sense, occurred in a recent article about C.S. 
Lewis's Narnia stories, in which Judith Shulevitz of the 
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW managed to find a trace of 
anti-Semitism, though the book in question makes no 
mention of Jews. What made this "discovery" distressing 
was that the article was, on the whole, a very fine 
appreciation of Lewis's work -- sensitive in the best 
sense. (I've even read an article detecting anti-Semitism 
in the movie STAR WARS. Don't ask.)

     What's so perverse about the drive to purge sports 
teams of Indian nicknames is that the names are meant not 
to demean, but to honor. The American Indian -- 
sensitively redubbed the "Native American" -- has long 
since become a symbol of qualities we want athletes to 
emulate, such as valor and ferocity. The American 
paleface tends to sentimentalize the people his 
government once tried to exterminate.

     In the same way, sports teams adopt the names of 
animals that signify power, speed, grace, and other 
admirable traits: lions and tigers and bears, for 
example. By the logic of the exquisitely sensitive, this 
must be insulting to predators of the wild. Why doesn't 
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals object?

     A glance through the sports pages yields a long 
(though far from complete) list of our animal friends: 
dolphins, alligators, cardinals, orioles, ravens, rams, 
bison, bulls, longhorns, diamondbacks, colts, broncos, 
bruins, terrapins, penguins, panthers, jaguars, devil 
rays, blue jays, marlins, falcons, seahawks, eagles, 
lizards, cubs. Are team sports fostering contempt for all 
these species? By the same token, does calling a team the 
Padres, the Saints, or the Angels encourage anti-Catholic 
bigotry?

     Of course not. The real problem is, if anything, 
just the opposite. Some team nicknames glorify not only 
animal predators, but human ones as well. And this is 
what really ought to concern us.

     As a defender of property rights, I am deeply 
offended by sports teams whose names exalt despoliation. 
I refer, of course, to calling athletes "pirates" and 
"buccaneers." Thanks to Hollywood, these cruel criminals 
of yore now enjoy romantic and heroic associations in the 
popular mind. Maybe these marine vermin now seem quaint 
and harmless, but in their own time they terrorized the 
seas.

     What kind of message are we sending to our kids when 
we glamorize such outlaws? Bear in mind that piracy was 
internationally recognized as a capital crime. It still 
is, and there are some parts of the world where it still 
exists. It should be neither celebrated nor minimized.

     Please join me in urging the professional sports 
teams of Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay to find new team 
nicknames. Also, your donations to this worthy cause are 
urgently needed. Just make out your check or money order 
to my organization, the name of which, to avoid any 
possible offense to minority groups, is simply Cash.

     Let me close on an upbeat note. Fortunately, the 
most egregious team nickname of all time is long since 
defunct. A generation ago the team moved to another city 
and adopted a new identity; but for many years before 
that, while it remained in Washington, D.C., its players 
bore the shameful name of a despicable class of 
parasites: the Senators.

     No wonder they had to leave town and change their 
name.

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