The Cleveland Guardians of Wokeness
BUCK: Clay, the Cleveland Indians are no more. Now they are the Cleveland Guardians, which I don’t even know — I know what a Guardian is, what it means, but how you supposed to get excited — I guess it doesn’t matter. They’re just gonna rebrand it. But this one to me seems a little silly. There were some mascots that I thought should change the names, I’ll be honest with you. Very few, but a couple that were a little, “I don’t know about that…”
CLAY: What’s funny to me is, they just decided, hey, we’re gonna change the name because Indians, they just kept the d-i-a-n-s, right, and added Guard, you know, in front of it so that it still kind of sounds the same. Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Guardians. It’s just a really weird move. And, by the way, you want to Amherst, which, by the way, big nerd there. But they have changed their mascot, right?
BUCK: Oh, yeah. We went from the Lord Jeffery Amherst, our mascot at games was a guy who was dressed like one of the bad guys from the movie The Patriot, the British, he’s got twig on, the britches and everything and he would dance around and, you know, the whole thing. There’s this story — I think it’s apocryphal — but there’s a story that Lord Jeff Amherst, you know, it was tough, he had a lot of things going on, and he gave blankets to a native tribe — and they think that the blankets — it’s a story — they didn’t understand microbiology, but they were quote “smallpox blankets” end quote and so this was considered the first usage of bioweapons. This is actually what the activists said. Bioweapons on U.S. soil. So now we’re the Mammoths, another large, furry elephant.
CLAY: Like the woolly mammoth?
BUCK: Yep.
CLAY: Okay. I actually think that’s a better mascot. So the Indians have changed their name.
I went to, for college, The George Washington Colonials, and of course we were called the Colonials because it was the Colonial army. And kids on our campus now are obsessed with changing Colonials because they think it’s connected to colonizing. And it’s like you have to talk to these people. No, no, no, we were the colonies, and we fought for our independence. That’s what the Colonial army was doing. But they are so indoctrinated with the idea that colonizing is a bad thing, that they want to change the name of the mascot George Washington Colonials.
Now, the thing about this is, I’m kind of with you. If you could put me and you and whoever else, like, we could sit across the table from the wokes and say, “Okay, let’s just end the mascot controversy once and for all. You give us a list of names. We’ll negotiate. We’ll agree to change X-number of names, and then we’ll be done with this forever. ” But that’s not how this works because in order to be woke, you always have to find something new that’s offensive. It doesn’t end. It never ends.
BUCK: People pose this to me, they say, what do you really think of the Redskins football team name? You know, I mean, this is — you know, there are — there are limits, right? But then I say okay, “What about the Vikings?” They say, “What do you mean? There’s nothing offensive about the Vikings?” Then I get to sit there and explain how the Vikings were the great sea wolves of history with their rape and pillage and slavery? ‘Cause that’s what the Vikings actually did. People think of them like, oh, you know, they’re just kind of just going around on the longboats and they’ve got these cool Swords.
CLAY: Yeah.
BUCK: It was a whole culture, basically, built on enslaving people, pillaging, looting.
CLAY: Not only that, you know, one that gets talked about now is the Fighting Irish, right? Notre Dame is the Fighting Irish. And people are like, oh, that’s offensive.
BUCK: And speaking from the Irish-American community, speaking as a member of it, we are a sturdy and fearsome lot who find life to be funny in many ways and can take a joke as well as a shot of what him you put in front of us. The Irish Irish I will say, on the other hand, a bunch of commies. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. The actual Irish are super left-wing and very woke.
CLAY: Well, and that’s why some people say that Fighting Irish is going to one day give up the ghost. You have the Atlanta Braves, Chicago Blackhawks, Florida State Seminoles, the Kansas City Chiefs, they just move on, right? Redskins is gone; now Indians is gone. Who’s next on the chopping block?
BUCK: The proper name of a tribe —
CLAY: Florida State is an example of that.
BUCK: We’ve had tribes that come forward and say when you’re calling, like, one of the most fearsome pieces of rotary aircraft, with the Apache, when you’re calling it that to honor our prowess as warriors, you’re not degrading us or mocking us, that’s cool. Now, the Apache one, by the way, that’s actually not a specific example, but I’m using it as there. Thee have been other times where there have been tribes who have come forward. I don’t know how the Seminoles —
CLAY: The Florida State Seminoles is an example. They are honored. They were a warring tribe that fought for itself in the state of Florida. They’re like we consider it an honor that you call yourself the Seminoles we want you to ton to that.
BUCK: The Fighting Irish thing, the guy’s a leprechaun. No one’s offended by leprechauns!
CLAY: Well, dwarfs — and you can’t say midgets anymore. I just said it, but you’re not supposed to say midget, you’re supposed to say little people, just like you can’t say Eskimo.
BUCK: No, no, there’s very important, very important point on this. You can say Eskimo. But it refers only to one of I believe five native tribes there —
CLAY: I didn’t know — yeah.
BUCK: So they don’t like — rather the native tribes don’t like that all are referred to as Eskimo because there’s Eskimo, Inuit and I think Aleuts is one, but don’t quote me on that one like the Aleutian Islands. I think there are a few different tribes so Eskimo is not like a slur or anything. It’s just used too broadly. This was explained to me by an Alaskan. But of course what’s the first question a New Yorker asks any Alaskan: Have you ever done the, like, Dangerous Catch fishing ship thing?
CLAY: Deadliest Catch.
BUCK: Deadliest Catch, yes.
