WASHINGTON D.C. – Following intense pressure from multiple groups and the public at large, the Washington Redskins have proudly announced that they will be officially changing their team name to the Cleveland Indians.
“A team should embody the strength and character of its namesake,” said Dan Snyder, team owner, “and we can think of no more proud or noble people than the brave men who played baseball for Cleveland for more than 100 years.”
The name change comes amid a paradigm shift, as society re-examines its long-standing choice to maintain sports team names with just absolutely bonkers levels of racism in them. Following years of campaigns to convince the team to abandon the name, the ownership finally caved after realizing that they could just pick another name which was technically less racist by only the slimmest of margins.
“We all know that the orders of magnitude for racist team names start with the Redskins and then go Indians, Chiefs, Braves, Blackhawks, and finally Eskimos,” continued Snyder to assembled reporters, “since we didn’t want to shock our fans too much, we simply defaulted to the next one down the list.”
During the intervening period before the change becomes official, the team has confirmed that they will endeavour to use the Redskins moniker as much as possible, as one last hurrah for its loyal fans. Merchandisers are already pumping out triple the number of hats, jerseys, and banners, all emblazoned with the soon to be defunct team name in extra-large font. Team owners stress that they want to make sure that this important part of their history is not forgotten.
The change is not without historical precedent. In 1949, the Rhode Island Rabbis yielded to public pressure to change their name and mascot from what was politely termed as “the most horrifically tasteless example of anti-semitism ever seen by human eyes”. Similarly, the Charleston NAME REDACTED BY EDITORS FOR REASONS OF GOOD TASTE underwent a name change for what should be flagrantly obvious reasons.
“Along with the name change, we will also be discontinuing the use of our logo, which drew upon ‘noble savage’ stereotypes of the stoic and silent indigenous warrior,” said Snyder, “in its place we’ll be adopting Chief Wahoo, the mascot and logo of the Cleveland Indians, to promote a more goofy, and family-friendly stereotype.”
“Boy, you know when you say all this stuff out loud all at once, it’s actually really, really awful,” he continued.
“I mean all of it. It’s just all very bad. We did this for how long?” he muttered, head in hands.
The team says that the name change will take effect some time over the next few weeks, unless all this race-stuff dies down before then, in which case forget about it, they’re just gonna stick with the current name.
