D.C. Football: Keep Honoring ‘Lone Star’ Dietz

As ThinkProgress reports today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Trademark Trial and Appeal Board canceled six federal trademark registrations for the Washington Redskins because federal law prohibits trademark protection for disparaging and offensive terms.

So much for that. Now that owner Dan Snyder can’t make money on team swag like sweatshirts and hats and other souvenirs, the cold logic of the free market will force him to change the team’s name to something he can trademark. Among other things, the National Football League itself is unlikely to continue supporting the name, because the NFL’s own logo always appears on all of the “official” team tchotchkes that football fans like to buy — and the NFL is certainly not going to stand idly by its logo gets used by every knock-off artist in the world who starts selling Washington, D.C., football team jerseys today.

What name should Snyder choose? Since he and his all-white band of apologists like to perpetuate the phony story that George Preston Marshall picked the name “Redskins” to “honor” the team’s then-coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz, I propose he sticks with that tradition.

Historian Linda M. Waggoner researched Snyder’s story and found that Dietz claimed to be Native American to dodge the World War I draft. In Thomas A. Britten’s book, American Indians in World War I: At Home and At War, we learn that in 1917 the new Selective Service administration struggled with the issue of military conscription for Native Americans, ruling that “noncitizen Indian” men should be exempt and instructing local draft boards to interpret the guidance liberally. Dietz obviously took advantage of that to “become” a Native American, but Waggoner explains that once Dietz was branded a “slacker” (the contemporary term for draft-dodger) by the media, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started an investigation, and he was indicted by a grand jury, ultimately pleading “no contest” to charges of draft evasion.

As Iraq degenerates in sectarian conflict, the same individuals who concocted the false rationales for the war — Dick Cheney, Frederick Kagan, William Kristol, Karl Rove, and Paul Wolfowitz — are again sounding off and beating the drums for war. Though these gents are quite keen on sending young American men and women into battle, they assiduously managed to avoid military service and its attendant risks themselves. As Dick Cheney famously said, he had “other priorities.” Unfortunately, the lack of military experience in America’s political class is all too common, whether we’re talking about the neocons, tea-folk like Texas Senator Ted Cruz, or AM radio loud-talkers like Rush Limbaugh.

So if Snyder would like to maintain the (fictive) tradition of “honoring” Coach Lone Star Dietz, his team’s new name seems obvious: all hail the Washington Chickenhawks.

By: Russ Burgos

Interested in foreign affairs, global conflict, and political narratives and discourses