After this Federal Appeals Court ruling, the cry-bullies will need some smelling salts. And maybe a hug.
Yes, charter members of “Our Lady of the Perpetually Offended” will think they just got burgled by the Grinch himself. Isn’t life wonderful!
If you haven’t heard already, Big Government thought they found an end run around the “problem” of the Redskins not changing their name: revoke their trademark. Elegantly simple, right? Hurt revenue, and force them to change their name? (Force being the preferred tactic of people with weak arguments.)
(This might help explain such problems as Yale students happily signing a petition against the First Amendment.)
A similar case just came before the Federal Appeals Courts. Guess what happened? A band from Oregon called “The Slants” had tried to trademark their name, but people got upset and tried to block their trademark.
Why were they upset? Because racism. How could they use such an obviously hurtful name? Have they no shame? Who are they anyway? (That’s the funny part.) A quick Google search tells me that “The Slants” are “the First All Asian Dance Rock Band in the world”. Feel free to read this paragraph a second time, slowly, and let the irony sink in.
The Humorless Left tried to censor them, and that would be reason enough for me to wish them enormous success… but they’ve got talent, too.
Back to the Redskins: what do “The Slants” have to do with the price of rice in China? (My 4th grade teacher’s favorite rhetorical question.) Simple. They won the right to trademark their name. And they won it the right way.
They won, not by groveling and trying to convince the court that they really “meant no harm” by it. (i.e. how could we be racist against ourselves?) They won the right to trademark that name whether or not anyone found it offensive. They took it as a First Amendment issue. And they won.
Surely this will affect the Redskins’ own case. Because the Federal Court in DC now says “it’s unconstitutional for the government to refuse to register trademarks because it disapproves of the messages or concludes that they may be disparaging to others”.
