In post-America, how loud and obnoxious you are is directly proportional to your influence on public policy

I have yet to weigh in on the Washington Redskins name "controversy," mainly because it makes me embarrassed for our society that something so trumped-up and trivial has gained such momentum.

But Mark Davis has waded right into it, and his observations are worth passing along:

An AP poll last year found the percentage of respondents wanting a name change: 11 percent.

I grew up in suburban Washington. Long afternoons of my youth were spent at RFK Stadium, home of the team from 1961 to 1996. Part of the soundtrack of my childhood is the sound of 57,000 fans singing at the top of their lungs, “Hail to the Redskins/ Hail victory/ Braves on the Warpath/ Fight for Old D.C!”, as the Redskins Band, made up primarily of scores of middle-aged black and white people, marched from end zone to end zone wearing headdresses.

Were these people engaged in some kind of mass derision of Native American culture? Was the name chosen as an intentional epithet?

Assertions of this type stretch the definition of stupidity. Who names a team after something negative? From ethnic imagery like Vikings to occupational imagery like Steelers and Packers, names are chosen because they convey a desirable trait. From the Kansas City Chiefs to the Atlanta Braves to specific tribal choices like the Florida State Seminoles, the focus is on tradition, fleetness of foot, ferocity in battle.

Yet there are those who suggest with a straight face that “Redskins” carries the same wounding power as the N-word. This grotesque, insulting lie diminishes anyone foolish enough to utter it.

The “R-word” is invisible today, except for its description of Washington’s football team. There are no tales of Cherokee or Sioux men and women stung by the “R-bomb” as they go about their daily existence.

But we now have lawyers from the federal copyright office, whose salaries are paid withour tax dollars, preoccupying themselves with this nonsense.

UPDATE: Robert Tracinski at The Federalist says the patent-office ruling should terrify all of us:

This ruling isn’t a slippery slope. It’s a slope we’ve already slid down: bureaucrats in Washington are now empowered to make subjective decrees about what is offensive and what will be tolerated, based on pressure from a small clique of Washington insiders. Anyone who runs afoul of these decrees, anyone branded as regressive and politically incorrect, is declared outside the protection of the federal government.

Post-America is a whole different kind of place from the United States of America.