The Middle East is in full meltdown, the U.S. economy is stagnant and there are a zillion other problems, but MSNBC has got its panties in a bunch over the name of the Washington Redskins.
So much so, MSNBC host Joy Reid issued a viewer warning before airing a clip of Sen. Harry Reid taking time away from his scheduled rants against the Koch brothers to fret about the football team.
Humorously, Reid slipped and said the name she had been avoiding all segment prior to her viewer warning.
Newsbusters notes:
MSNBC journalists weren’t so delicate when Bashir, on November 15, 2013, recounted how one slave in the 1700s was forced to “s-h-i-t” in another slave’s mouth. The anchor suggested Palin would be an “outstanding candidate” to have someone do the same to her.
On April 13, 2009, then MSNBC-host David Shuster mocked the Tea Party as “teabaggers” and made several sexual and vulgar jokes.
Clearly, the journalists at MSNBC have an odd standard of what is acceptable and what isn’t.
Meanwhile, Rick Reilly provided some perspective at ESPN:
I guess this is where I’m supposed to fall in line and do what every other American sports writer is doing. I’m supposed to swear I won’t ever write the words “Washington Redskins” anymore because it’s racist and offensive and a slap in the face to all Native Americans who ever lived. Maybe it is.
I just don’t quite know how to tell my father-in-law, a Blackfeet Indian. He owns a steak restaurant on the reservation near Browning, Mont. He has a hard time seeing the slap-in-the-face part.
“The whole issue is so silly to me,” says Bob Burns, my wife’s father and a bundle holder in the Blackfeet tribe. “The name just doesn’t bother me much. It’s an issue that shouldn’t be an issue, not with all the problems we’ve got in this country.”
And I definitely don’t know how I’ll tell the athletes at Wellpinit (Wash.) High School — where the student body is 91.2 percent Native American — that the “Redskins” name they wear proudly across their chests is insulting them. Because they have no idea.
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