Friday, May 30, 2014

The 81-Year-Old Newspaper Article That Destroys The Redskins' Justification For Their Name

By Travis Waldron  

"The 81-Year-Old Newspaper Article That Destroys The Redskins’ Justification For Their Name"

George Preston Marshall, founder and owner of the Washington Redskins, in 1935.

George Preston Marshall, founder and owner of the Washington Redskins, in 1935.

CREDIT: AP

As challenges against the name of the Washington Redskins have persisted for more than four decades, the teams ownership and management has held on to a consistent story: that the team changed its original name â€" the Boston Braves â€" to the Boston Redskins in 1933 to honor its coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz, who maintained at the time that he was a member of the Sioux tribe.

But in a 1933 interview with the Associated Press, George Preston Marshall, the team’s owner and original founder, admitted that the story wasn’t true.

“The fact that we have in our head coach, Lone Star Dietz, an Indian, together with several Indian players, has not, as may be suspected, inspired me to select the name Redskins,” Marshall said in the AP report. The quote was originally referenced in a story on the team’s name at Sports Illustrated’s MMQB site. Jesse Witten, the lead attorney in a lawsuit challenging the legality of the team’s federal trademark protection, unearthed the actual AP report this week, and provided it to to Washington Post columnist Robert McCartney. ESPN’s Keith Olbermann reported it on his show, “Olbermann,” Thursday night.

Here’s a copy of the news clip, which ran in the Hartford (Conn.) Courant on July 5, 1933:

redskinsnewspaper

CREDIT: Hartford Courant

The team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, and top management have justified the team’s name as an “honor” to Native Americans in letters to fans and the public. So too has NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. And both have leaned on the story that Marshall chose the name to honor Dietz to make that case.

Snyder referenced the history without using Dietz’s name specifically in a letter to season ticket-holders last October:

As some of you may know, our team began 81 years ago â€" in 1932 â€" with the name “Boston Braves.” The following year, the franchise name was changed to the “Boston Redskins.” On that inaugural Redskins team, four players and our Head Coach were Native Americans. The name was never a label. It was, and continues to be, a badge of honor.

The team has also used Dietz’s heritage â€" and the claim that the Redskins were named in his honor â€" to defend itself in the lawsuits challenging its federal trademark.

The NFL, too, has rested its case on that history. Goodell did so in a letter to 10 members of Congress who wrote him to challenge the name last June. The commissioner called the name a symbol of “strength, courage, pride, and respect” and specifically referenced Dietz’s role in the name:

In our view, a fair and thorough discussion of the issue must begin with an understanding of the roots of the Washington franchise and the Redskins name in particular. As you may know, the team began as the Boston Braves in 1932, a name that honored the courage and heritage of Native Americans. The following year, the name was changed to the Redskins â€" in part to avoid confusion with the Boston baseball team of the same name, but also to honor the team’s then-head coach, William “Lone Star” Dietz.

Asked for their response to the news clip, neither the NFL nor the Washington Redskins responded by the time of publication.

Dietz’s history was already in question at the time thanks to the work of historian Linda M. Waggoner, whose exhaustive account of Dietz’s life found that he almost certainly was not a Native American, as he had claimed. In fact, Dietz faced a federal trial alleging that he had falsely represented himself as a Native American to avoid the World War I draft. After the first trial ended with a hung jury, Dietz pleaded no contest to the same charges in a second trial and served 30 days in jail.

When ThinkProgress asked the franchise about the claims that Dietz was not a Native American last year, the team’s president and general manager, Bruce Allen, called the questions “ignorant requests” and suggested that we speak to Dietz’s family instead.

Amid scrutiny about Dietz’s history, the team has given the appearance of backing away from relying on the claim that he inspired the name. Notably, Allen did not cite Dietz or the origins of the name in his written response to a letter from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and 49 other senators who called on the team to drop “Redskins.”

If Marshall didn’t choose the name based on Dietz or the presence of Native Americans, what was his reason? As Olbermann notes in his report, the team chose its original name â€" the Boston Braves â€" because it shared a field with Boston’s baseball team by the same name. Marshall explains the AP story that he gave up the name “Braves” because it was too easily confused with the baseball team, and he chose “Redskins” to keep the Native American imagery as the team moved away from the Braves and into Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox.

Until recently, that story was more commonly told than the one about Dietz. In 1972, freelance writer Joe Marshall wrote a story on team nicknames in a promotional program from a game between Washington and the Atlanta Falcons. Joe Marshall didn’t reference Dietz in his story, instead writing that the team wanted to “change names but keep the Indian motif”:

The Redskins also copied a baseball team, the Boston Braves. George Preston Marshall started with his team in Boston on Braves Field. When he switched playing sites, he wanted to change names but keep the Indian motif. Since he was now sharing a park with the Red Sox and at the same time liked Harvard’s crimson jerseys, Redskins seemed appropriate. Redskins they have remained, a proud tradition. Until now, that is.

In that sense, it seems obvious that the name “Redskins” was chosen more as a marketing ploy than anything else, a way to tweak the team’s name without changing the image it had established. Regardless of the original motive, however, this much is clear: the story the team and NFL have used to justify the name’s existence as a “badge of honor” is not true, and the man who founded the team refuted it himself more than 80 years ago.

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How Verizon Tricks You Into Paying For The Privilege To Pay More

How Verizon Tricks You Into Paying for the Privilege to Pay More

Earlier this month, the FCC voted in favor of a pretty thoroughly terrible proposal that would kill net neutrality as we know it. A proposal that would give broadband companies an absurd amount of powers that they themselves delineated. A proposal that would also give Verizon (and broadband carriers in general) the ability to act as internet gatekeeperâ€"playing favorites and charging whatever the hell they damn well please.

Now, thanks to some illuminating leaked documents from New York's Public Utility Law Project, we know for a fact that Verizon is taking an advantage of a little loophole in the law that gives them all the benefits of regulation without any of the obligations. To be perfectly clear, it's likely that every broadband provider plays this particular shell game. Verizon's just the one that got caught in the act.

It's important to note, too, that even though Verizon pulled the trigger, it's our very broken regulatory system that supplied the gun. When our laws prove ineffective, it's hard to be surprised when corporations start fulfilling every terrible, money-mongering stereotype there is.

Verizon's maneuvering really is a complicated little bit of duplicity. Let's break it down.

What do I need to know?

Let's start with the basics. Verizon's trickery takes advantage of the fact that there are both national and state-level telecom laws, each of which comes with its own quirks and levels of oversight. The FCC has jurisdiction over telecom services on an interstate level, while state governments have jurisdiction on an intrastate level. In other words, communications that cross state lines have to follow FCC regulations, while those traveling within state boundaries have to answer to the state itself.

Within each these levels of law, we're also dealing with two distinct types of service. There's something called Title I, an information/data service and the category that covers broadband, as well as something called Title II, traditional voice/telephone services that will often be referred to as "common carrier" services. While the term common carrier actually encompasses a whole range of services, for our purposes, we just need to know that common carriers are required to serve the general public without any discrimination whatsoever.

Ok, so what does that have to do with Verizon?

When you provide two distinct classifications of services (voice and broadband), you also have to adhere to two distinct sets of benefits and drawbacks that go along with either class. But Verizon (and pretty much every other major telecom player) injects your home with both voice and broadband, through it arguably falls under both jurisdictions. Or, as happens in practice thanks to some clever dodging and weaving, neither.

Isn't it kind of impossible to follow two conflicting sets of rules at the same time?

It sure is! Which is why Verizon is doing no such thing. Instead, it's carefully plucking out all the various benefits that both Title I and Title II have to offer, while leaving the unsavory obligation bits untouched. And it's been getting away with it, too, because while it's in Washington trying to kill net neutrality and avoid reclassification, Verizon is also happily taking advantage of the very common carrier status it's supposedly fighting against.

At a state level, Verizon has every reason to want to classify itself as a common carrier, since common carriers are afforded some pretty sweet benefits wherever their wires are physically located. Derek Turner, Research Director at the Free Press, explains:

If you own a wired network, you have to have access to public rights of way. Your wires have to exist on public property. You can't just go around digging up the streets to lay your fiber cables. Someone owns the utility poles, and that means they can make you pay huge fees to use those poles for your fiber cables. That's bad for the public interest overall, and since the poles are on public property, the rates are regulated.

As a telecom carrier, you get a specific rate that is usually lower than the rate a cable or private carrier could get.

Meanwhile, on a federal level, Verizon's simultaneously lobbying Congress to keep national common carrier status as far away from its fiber optic network as possible. Because if the FCC classifies Verizon as such, Verizon would be forced to offer broadband according to the same strict, federal (not to mention fair and equal opportunity) regulations to which our telephones abide. If Verizon escapes that Title II classification, though, it's free to hike rates however it sees fit.

All of which is pretty damn sneaky, sure, but as far as the law is concerned, 100 percent legal.

Ok, so Verizon is being shady. How does this affect me?

What's a win-win for Verizon is a lose-lose for the consumer (read: you). As Verizon is making deals to roll out its FiOS network across the country, it's been busy classifying it as a Title II service. Which means that it can charge its plain ol' copper-based phone customers for the actual development and installation of FiOS, since it is, presumably, just a replacement for the Title II service they're already providing you.

Except that it's not. Because while Verizon is charging you to lay down its FiOS line as a Title II, it's also fighting the fed to simultaneously enjoy the benefits of a Title I. Benefits that, specifically, would allow Verizon to charge you even more for using the damn line than it might otherwise.

So Verizon is describing itself as one thing to Congress and the opposite thing to states, both of which end up giving Verizon more freedom at the expense of the internet's own. And that sticks with the bill for an installation that you a) didn't ask for and b) will cost you even more once its installed.

…Yep. That's pretty miserable. How do we fix it?

What thisâ€"not to mention the net neutrality debate in its entiretyâ€"boils down to is one big, egregiously glossed over problem: reclassification. Without reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers, Verizon's underhanded game is free to continue with the full support of the law.

We've reached out to Verizon for comment and are waiting to hear back, but as far as semantics goes, there is every reason to classify Verizon's broadband as a telecom service. It offers a service to the public that enables them to send the information of their choosing, between points of their choosing, without change in the form or content of the information. In other words, the exact, legal definition of a telecom service. According to Turner:

Broadband is a telecom service. Common carriage is essential to our ability to speak freely and connect and communicate. It's insane that under the law, Verizon's FiOS broadband service is treated the same way as Gizmodo.com; but they are, because they are both "information services."

It's important to note that Verizon is by no means the only culprit here. Most big ISPs who also offer voice (i.e. most of them) are pulling the same stuntâ€"because the law allows it. We're never going to convince giant corporations to stop making ludicrous sums of money. But now that we're aware of how bad we're actually getting screwed, we canâ€"and shouldâ€"do everything in our power to keep the internet fair and the law on our side. After all, "a government of the people, by the people, and for the corporate special interests" just doesn't have quite the same ring.

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How Much Does The Perfect Arcade Cost? Everything You Love

Arcadia, a Love Story

Chris Kooluris transformed his bedroom into a 1980s arcadeâ€"and altered the course of his life.

By Emily Dreyfuss

Caption caption caption caption Benjamin Rasmussen

Video: Andrew White / WIRED

THE GAME COLLECTOR

For a guy who has spent six months and more than $32,000 turning the bedroom of his Manhattan apartment into an old-school video arcade, Chris Kooluris is very put together. He greets me at his Murray Hill flat dressed head to toe in designer casual wearâ€"Ralph Lauren jeans, pristine white Y-3 Yohji Yamamoto sneakers, and a crisp Captain America T-shirt. He’s trim and athletic-looking, his shaven face boyish for a 37-year-old. This is not the obsessed nerd I was expecting. Then again, looks can be deceiving. He invites me in. The living room is bright and accented with brass everythingâ€"brass sconces, brass lamps, ornate brass mirrors. But I’m not here to see the living room. I came to see what Kooluris is hiding in the 180-square-foot bedroom. I look down the hallway: The door is closed, but from the other side I can hear a faint ting-ting-ting.

Chris Kooluris walks Oakley through his Murray Hill neighborhood. Amy Lombard

We make our way down the hall and he ceremoniously opens the door. It is a portal into the past. The first thing I see is a Donkey Kong cabinet, but then my eyes are drawn to a row of pristine gumball machines that look just like the ones at the Yellow Balloon where I got my first haircut on Ventura Boulevard in 1984.

Everyone who enters this room, Kooluris tells me, has the same reaction: They tell him about the part of their childhood it reminds them of.

Even the floor is funâ€"his girlfriend helped design it: multihued FLOR carpet tiles that bring out the colors of each machine. In the center of the room is a massive pedestal; inside is a PC running the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator software that’s mostly used to play Street Fighter II. It’s piped through a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall surrounded by 20 replica game marquees that Kooluris painted himself.

He walks me through each game, explaining what makes it special. A refurbished Tron, one of the all-time greats. A brand new Ms. Pac-Manâ€"‘really, just for the ladies,” he says. This Donkey Kong, he says, is the very one that former champion Steve Wiebe played in the first Kong Off competition in 2011

But perhaps the pièce de resistance is the Fix-It Felix Jr., a custom-built arcade machine that plays a faux-retro game that was the centerpiece of the 2012 Disney animated movie Wreck-It Ralph. It’s an ’80s arcade game that didn’t even exist in the ’80s. Kooluris says it’s one of about 10 in private hands.

Over the sound of the clanging games, Kooluris tells me how awesome the Fix-It Felix is, how Disney distressed the cabinet so it would look like it really was 30 years old. All I can think is: Why is an adult man obsessed with a game made for a kids’ movie that came out only a few years ago?

The answer eventually reveals itself: The game is brilliant marketing, and Kooluris is a brilliant marketer. A vice president at Weber Shandwick, one of the world’s leading PR firms, Kooluris has been in the marketing and promotion business for 12 years. One of the highlights of his career involved his second love after gaming: Guns N’ Roses. He is an unabashed GNR fanatic, and he credits himself with getting Axl Rose to finally release the album Chinese Democracy. In early 2008, he persuaded his then-client Dr. Pepper to offer everyone in the US a coupon for a free soda if Rose released the long-delayed record. “Total guerrilla marketing,” he says.

Chinese Democracy was indeed released later that year, Dr. Pepper gave out lots of coupons for free sodas, and Kooluris got to meet his idol. “When I met Axl,” Kooluris says, “the first thing he said to me was, ‘Are you Kaneda?’” Kaneda is the handle Kooluris uses on message boards.

A Way of life

Video: Andrew White / WIRED

One day in late 2013, Kooluris was on the street in front of his apartment, supervising the delivery of his new Donkey Kong machine. A boy and his father walked by. ¶“Dad, what’s that?” the child asked, pointing at the Donkey Kong cabinet. ¶“It’s like a big iPad,” his father said.

Kooluris shakes his head mournfully at this memory. “That is just sacrilege,” he says. Arcade games were not just big personal game machines. They were about community. They were a way of life.

Kooluris talks about his early immersion into arcade culture with an almost spiritual reverence. He grew up in Yonkers, New York, taking taxis to play the arcades at Nathan’s Famous with his twin brother Alex when they were too young to drive. He remembers the sweet smell of the place, the sound of the screaming and laughter when a kid was on a roll. If you were good enough, you could play for hours on one quarter.

Steve Wiebe’s autograph on the Donkey Kong cabinet.

Amy Lombard

In 1992, when he and his brother were teenagers, his love of gaming got serious. “When Street Fighter II hit, it wasn’t like we knew that there was this new Street Fighter game coming. It was the ultimate surprise,” he says. “You only learned about something when it was physically right in front of your face. I remember I walked into the arcade in Nathan’s, and there was just a row of Street Fighter II Champion Editions, and I’m like, oh my God. It changes your world.”

Street Fighter competitions at Nathan’s got so tense that actual fights would break out, Kooluris says. At least when it came to playing the game, he had a considerable advantage over other kids: He and Alex had convinced their parents to buy them their own Street Fighter II cabinet so they could practice at home. It is conspicuous by its absence here in Kooluris’ bedroom arcade. His brother ended up with it. “I’ve been trying to pry it from his hands, but to no avail,” Kooluris says.

Living The Dream