Redskins Win! (Not at Football)

The Supreme Court recently ruled unanimously on Matal v. Tam, allowing the front man of a band called The Slants to register the band's name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office.  In the case, SCOTUS ruled a ban on names deemed offensive by the government as unconstitutional.  This is great news for the Redskins, and the other shoe dropped today when The Justice Department told a federal appeals court that they are conceding that the Redskins of the NFL will not have a trademark revocation.

This was, in my opinion, the correct decision, and it makes me feel a bit better about my country that it was a unanimous decision, meaning that even the justices often considered to be far Left were in agreement with an obvious defense of the First Amendment.  Sure, The Slants are an Asian-American band, so it's accepted to be fine and not racist, like when an African-American uses the N-word.  But the point is that the U.S. Patent and Trademark office can't block things that it finds offensive, that other people might find offensive, or that someone can construe as hate speech.  This is a huge win for free speech.

While the Redskins are different than The Slants in that the Redskins are not an exclusively Native American football team, it's a name that's been around since the days of the Great Depression.  No one seemed to have a problem with it until recently, and even now, it seems to be a handful of people on the far Left who have nothing better to do than protest the names of things and search for Native Americans who will agree with them to legitimize their triggered state.  While I understand why "Redskins" is a poor choice for a football team and "The Slants" is a poor name for a band, because we live in a free country, it's really not my decision to make.  Nor should it be.  If people are really upset by the name of something, the free market would serve to punish the business owners.  If I opened up a business called The Mountain Wop Shop, that should be my decision, and not only because I'm Italian-American.  If I want to name a cleaning product Spic and Span, that should be my decision, even though I'm not Hispanic.  ...Oh wait, someone already did that?  Where are the protests for that?

Not too far down the road from where I live is Yale University, where they are changing the name of Calhoun College because of John Calhoun's dealings in the slave industry.  Although it amounts to caving to the demands of angry Leftists who are always looking for things to complain about, that's Yale's decision to make.  But if Yale students are really serious, I wonder why they aren't protesting for Yale University to change its name.  Elihu Yale was a slave trader.  Could it be because it would be directly opposed to their self-interest?  Yale is a prestigious school--arguably the best in the world.  It's a well-recognized and well-respected name.  Changing its name to Tubman University or something, while it may make some folks feel good or vindicated, would be an absolute disaster.  It would take a long time for Tubman University to become a household name.

And it would be a long time until the Washington Red Hats or Potato Skins or Red Potatoes or whatever they would be called in lieu of the Redskins became a household name (Washington Congress would be great because they lose a lot and have a low approval rating).  And while we're at it, we must consider the feelings of those on the far Right.  Somewhere out there, there are conservative Christian mothers angry that Eddie Vedder's band is called Pearl Jam, which is just a term that means semen.  How about we start calling them Raspberry Jam instead?

One day a student would escape the oppressive Leftist regime at Tubman University via an underground railroad, catch a Red Potatoes game at a local bar, and get invited to attend a Raspberry Jam concert with new friends.  But later, his new friends would decide to give his ticket to someone else because they were Indian givers all along.