The New Yorker magazine decided to bring the liberal crusade against the “Washington Redskins” name into its cover for Thanksgiving (the December 1 edition).
The New Yorker explained, “Many Native Americans have said that the longstanding name of Washington’s N.F.L. franchise is repugnant and offensive to them. Bruce McCall’s cover brings attention, through satire, to what has become the subject of numerous editorials and rallies.”
While Redskins owner Daniel Snyder calls the team name “a badge of honor.” McCall disparaged all Indian names for sports teams. “This is 2014, and it seems a little late to be dealing with that stuff,” McCall says. “It should have been quashed a long time ago. We did everything to the Indians that we could, and it’s still going on. It seems crude and callous. Names like the Atlanta Braves come from another time. So, in my cover, I’ve brought the cultural arrogance of one side back to the sixteen-hundreds and the first Thanksgiving dinner, just to see what would happen.”
A defender of the football tradition could easily say this could actually illustrate the white Anglo-Saxon respect for the name, what with the “Go Redskins” cheering and all. Perhaps we should try arguing that The New Yorker logo, with a high-collared white gentleman with a top hat and a monocle named "Eustace Tilley," is a loathsome uptight-Caucasian stereotype that causes white children to hate themselves. Or the team could change the team name to "Whiteskins" and put Eustace on the helmet.
The whole cover is below:
