Erick has previously noted the existence of a caucus of The Men Who Pee Sitting Down — basically, a bunch of aggrieved white left-wing culture warriors hellbent on utilizing a select few usefully militant American Indians toward the common goal of shaming a proud and iconic American football franchise into abdicating its traditional name for the sake of “tolerance.”  With the 2014 NFL season about to kick off, the controversy is ready to rear its ugly head once again.

Recently, the overwhelming majority of the Senate Democratic caucus — evincing their usual disdain for the power of market forces to yield societal good — thought it best to send a heavy-handed and rather Orwellian letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell “urging” him to change the Redskins’ name.  Soon thereafter, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office outrageously decided to further short-circuit the public debate, stripping the Washington football franchise of federal trademark protection; last week, the Redskins filed suit in federal court in Virginia to overturn the Trademark Office’s misbegotten sense of aggrievement.

Mainstream NFL commentators are now beginning to weigh in, and CBS’s Phil Simms and NBC’s Tony Dungy have capitulated  to the cultural revisionist bullies peddling this grandiose farce by means of their disavowing the use of the word “Redskins” during on-air broadcasts.  Simms says he is not picking a side in the debate, but will merely avoid saying the “R-word” out of respect for those who might be offended.  With all due respect to the New York Giants quarterbacking legend, his claim that he is not choosing a side in the debate may be the most transparent lie since, “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it” — and maybe since Slick Willie Clinton’s vice president claimed he invented the Internet.  By refusing to utter the undeniably official and still-legitimate team name on-air, but continuing to say the names of every other NFL team, Simms and Dungy will be singling out the Washington franchise for unique disparagement — the very goal of the bullies of The Men Who Pee Sitting Down.

As a lifelong New York Giants fan, alas, I do not criticize Simms haphazardly; as a conservative concerned with the institutional soundness of marriage, I do not quickly criticize Dungy for taking public stands — even if unpopular.  Both men should nonetheless be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, and rethink their vainglorious attempts to come down on the “right side of history” in this football-centric public debate.  They are both now complicit in the insidious War on the Washington Redskins, which seeks to undermine the Washington football franchise’s integrity and defy its strident owner’s resolve (if not pugnaciousness) in order to accommodate white liberals and a small minority of genuinely offended American Indians.  Simms and Dungy have chosen a side, even if inadvertently, in The Men Who Pee Sitting Down’s ignominious attempt to ignore the overwhelming majority of Native Americans who have no problem with the franchise name — let alone the anodyne and indeed quite positive history of the use of the name, “Redskins,” in the American sporting lexicon.  This kind of shenanigans might be what we would expect from the gun-grabbing über-politicized hack Bob Costas (oh wait, that actually did happen), but it should be beneath the dignity of the high-quality football punditry so often embodied by Phil Simms and Tony Dungy.

I am a traditionalist, but I am not inextricably wedded to the idea that we must forever keep the Washington Redskins’ team name.  As it is capable of doing in so many other areas of life, the market is perfectly capable here of channeling the citizenry’s variegated viewpoints in a positive direction toward a cohesive and ultimately beneficial end goal.  What is not needed is the U.S. Senate Democratic caucus issuing a ukase to the NFL commissioner to cut off public debate, or holier-than-thou football commentators deciding they will single out a much-villified team and subject it to fundamentally disparate on-air treatment, all in the name of appeasing The Men Who Pee Sitting Down.

Alas, in accordance with doctrinaire progressivism, the ends always justify the means.  Always.

“…there must be progress, and if in its march private interests are in the way, they must yield to the good of the community.”  Hadacheck v. Sebastian, 239 U.S. 394, 410 (1915).  

‘Tis the progressive mantra.  Enjoy your football this season, Washington “R-words” fans, and let us hope that The Men Who Pee Sitting Down learn to take a cue from your star quarterback.