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http://www.washtimes.com/national/20010828-674874.htm

But what is a chief without any Indians?

     Let's cry a tear this morning with Geronimo. 
     The mighty Chiricahua Apache chieftain, who terrorized the U.S.
Cavalry in Arizona and New Mexico as the 19th century began to wane, weeps
bitter tears somewhere on the happy hunting ground. He shouldn't have to
cry alone.
     He has good reason to weep. Certain descendants of the noble red man,
an examplar of courage, cunning and true grit for generations of American
boys, are aping the example of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, of all people,
extorting in the name of perverted notions of justice. In the Rev's case,
for a lot of wampum.
     Running a race hustle can be very profitable, as the Rev demonstrates
with his looting of corporate America, and it beats working. But it would
shame Geronimo and the courageous redskins of an earlier, more virile
America.
     Richard Regan, who tried to shut down a Little League in suburban
Maryland because he was "offended" that some of the teams called themselves
"Braves," "Indians" and "Warriors," is new at this form of ethnic
cleansing, and, unlike Jesse Jackson, has not yet revealed exactly how he
expects to make a buck (no pun intended) with the boycott he tried to
organize under the sponsorship of a state agency, the Maryland Commission
on Indian Affairs, of which he is a member.
     But he has big dreams. He wants to cleanse the entire state of
Maryland of traces of Indians. Today, Maryland; tomorrow, the world. The
Montgomery County Board of Education will consider tonight a resolution to
ban such names. After ethnically cleansing Maryland, Mr. Regan can then
work on eliminating the Indian names of half the states. Illinois is the
most odious of all, named for the Illini, a tribe of Algonquins who called
themselves by their word for "warriors." But what did they know?
Fortunately, Maryland owes its name to no such robust legacy; the state was
named for Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of an English king, Charles II.
But for a bureaucrat's whim, Parris Glendening would be the governor of
Henrietta.
     But not just states. Potomac is out, along with Susquehanna, Patuxent
and Monocacy. So are Assateague, Accokeek, Anacostia, Quantico and
Mattaponi. We might just assign numbers to our rivers, our purple-mountain
majesties, our fruited plains. This might offend mathematicians as well as
poets. It's not yet clear what we can do about Indian summer, except cancel
it.
     Richard Regan says he is an Indian of the Lumbee Cheraw tribe, though
his own Christian name, of sturdy Anglo-Saxon origin, renders this claim
suspicious. If he really is an Indian, his parents showed little
sensitivity to Anglo-Saxon sensibilities when they appropriated the name
Richard for a Lumbee child, and he shows even less regard for the common
decencies by flaunting it.
     Racism, after all, is in the eye of the beholder, which is what makes
the race hustle so profitable in modern America. (As a descendant of a
tribe of Northumberland pig farmers, some of whom were probably named
"Richard," I can tell you that my kinsmen are highly offended.)
     Gov. Glendening, no kemo sabe he, stayed behind at the fort in
Annapolis and dispatched his cavalry at the Department of Housing and
Community Development, which supervises Mr. Regan's commission, to call off
the boycott.
     Could anyone imagine Geronimo or Sitting Bull as petty bureaucrats?
Mr. Regan was so disappointed that he lapsed into a little insensitive
himself.
     "I feel like the legs have been cut out from under us," he said.
     Such hate speech is probably in violation of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, and if not should be, demonstrating unbelievable
insensitivity to surgeons as well as to paraplegics.
     And it gets worse. Certain other Indian "activists" an "activist" is
someone without a life are eager to cleanse the landscape of other place
names as well. They have targeted Squaw Mountain in Maine. They insist
"squaw" is an Indian word for "prostitute," and Gov. Angus King of Maine
(his parents, perhaps ignorant of bovine feelings, named him for a cow?)
agreed to erase "squaw" from the map. This shows shocking insensitivity to
hundreds of gainfully employed ladies of the evening, and changing Squaw
Valley to Hooker Valley is likely to offend a lot of pimps. Pimps are
people, too.
     Mr. Regan acts as if he speaks for Indians from sea to shining sea,
though a Comanche of my acquaintance insists "there's no way we would
listen to a Lumbee about anything." Indeed, several callers who identified
themselves variously as Algonquin, Iroquois, Quapaw and Cheyenne note that
Maryland -- or Henrietta -- has not a single Indian tribe. Mr. Regan, they
scoff, is just another chief without any Indians.

Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.

*****

Comment:  Does this clown really think Native people are protesting mascots
only to make a buck?  How ignorant can you get?  Does he have a shred of
proof for this incredible accusation?  No.

   http://www.bluecorncomics.com/stype18d.htm

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