So, farewell then, Chief Wahoo

An assiduous reader reminds us that the Toronto District School Board has been justly ridiculed on WWW prior to the Islamophiliac nonsense described in "Canada's loony left, pro-Muslim 'public' school board", WWW 16/1/18. Last fall, in "PC gone mad! Toronto public school board drops 'Chief' from job titles", WWW 11/10/17, Walt quoted at length from Post Media's Christie Blatchford, who took the TDSB to task for its decision to excise the word "Chief" from all its job titles, in the interests of not giving offence to Canada's First Nations (read: indigenous peoples... or... wait for it... Indians).

The TDSB's ultra-liberal, ultra-PC diktat was provoked by the fake-news controversy in the Excited States of America about whether the Cleveland baseball team, known for decades as the "Indians", should change their name to something less "racist". Since that idea was a non-starter, the SJWs were demanding that the team get rid of its mascot, whose smiling face has adorned its caps, uniforms and other paraphernalia since 1947. His name is... or was... Chief Wahoo.

I say "was" because today the Cleveland Indians caved. Team owner Paul Dolan announced that the Chief would be around for the 2018 season, but would then go to the Happy Hunting Ground to join Mr Rebel (Boone County KY High School), Colonel Reb (Ole Miss), and the old Darkie toothpaste guy.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told the meeja, "The club ultimately agreed with my position that the logo is no longer appropriate for on-field use." Playing Mortimer Snerd to Mr Manfred's Edgar Bergen, Mr Dolan said, "We have consistently maintained that we are cognizant and sensitive to both sides of the discussion. While we recognize many of our fans have a longstanding attachment to Chief Wahoo, I'm ultimately in agreement with Commissioner Manfred's desire to remove the logo from our uniforms in 2019."

So Walt's use of the past tense was premature. Chief Wahoo gets one more year, during which the Indians will continue to wear his image on their sleeves and caps. Merchandise featuring the beloved mascot will continue to be sold in northeast Ohio "to retain the trademark."

What happens in 2019? Will the designers just kind of lighten Chief Wahoo up, changing him to pink and then to white, like they did with the Darkie dark guy who became the Darlie white guy? Or will they paint out the feather, make him darker and change his name to something more in line with the city he represents, like, say, "Prince Leroy"? I can hardly wait to find out.

Oh (as Columbo used to say), there's one more thing. The forces of political correctness hit a double on this one, but the inning isn't over yet. They'll keep batting until they force the Cleveland team to drop the moniker "Indians" as well. And then? There will be other racist team names to expunge from the vocabulary of American sports: the Kansas City Chiefs, the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Blackhawks, whose mascot is the coolest Indian in all of sports. His name is Tommy Hawk.