The Washington Post editorial board (the group that writes every day’s unsigned editorials) announced with fanfare that they would no longer use the word “Redskins” as they continue to agitate for a change in the team name. So “while we wait for the National Football League to catch up with thoughtful opinion and common decency, we have decided that, except when it is essential for clarity or effect, we will no longer use the slur ourselves.”
“What we are discussing here is a change only for editorials. Unlike our colleagues who cover sports and other news, we on the editorial board have the luxury of writing about the world as we would like it to be,” they wrote in their best Robert F. Kennedy impression.
“Nor do we intend to impose our policy on our readers. If you write a letter about football and want to use the team name, we aren’t going to stop you.”
When I asked editorial board member Scott Butterworth on Twitter if the Post used the term more than twice a year, he confessed that the year before last, that was about right:
@TimJGraham Twelve in the past year. Two the year before that.
— Scott Butterworth (@mrbutterworth) August 22, 2014
This is striking a pose, and not a very meaningful pose. The masthead should say The Washington Poseur.
