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" The NBA Finals have ended now, and with them go the ads that the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation have sponsored to protest the continued use of the Washington Redskins name. If you haven&amp;#039;t seen the . As John Oliver has pointed out, this ad effectively makes it impossible to argue in favour of the Washington Redskins name, if indeed such an argument were ever possible. The NFL and the Redskins ownership have decided to ignore it. I suppose after every sensible journalist, your own hardcore fans, and the US Senate have stated their opposition, what does a mere commercial matter?      And yet I think that ad makes one thing very clear about the Redskins &amp;quot;controversy,&amp;quot; such as it is\u2014that it has now officially devolved from a debate around political correctness into one of basic sanity. The appropriate questions to ask about the NFL and for the Redskins ownership are now these: Are they living in the same world as us? Do they understand how language works? Dan Snyder does not need a lesson in the history of American atrocities against native populations. He doesn&amp;#039;t need a lesson in the effect cultural symbols have on the prejudices minorities face. He needs a lesson in semantics. A small introduction: If everybody in the world believes a word to be an insult, then it is one. That&amp;#039;s how language works. So, for instance, if a stranger came up to you while you were getting coffee and said, &amp;quot;Good morning, fuckface,&amp;quot; you would feel insulted. If you said to this stranger, &amp;quot;Why did you call me fuckface?&amp;quot; And he replied, &amp;quot;Oh, to me it&amp;#039;s not an insult\u2014it&amp;#039;s just the way I traditionally greet strangers, as a token of my respect,&amp;quot; you would still be right to feel insulted. &amp;quot;Fuckface&amp;quot; is an insult. Similarly, &amp;quot;Redskin&amp;quot; in an insult, no matter what the intentions behind it.  This is obvious. It couldn&amp;#039;t actually get more obvious. Even more obvious is that the Washingston Redskins will eventually change their name. The pressure has been unremitting. It shows no sign of diminishment, and has now taken on the tenor and content of a civil rights issue. What do you think, Dan Snyder? That six months from now everyone in America is going to wake up and think, You know what, Redskins really isn&amp;#039;t that bad of a slur? You are going to change that name. The only question is at what point and with how much grace. Why is this so difficult? There&amp;#039;s precedent in Washington itself, when the Washington Bullets changed their name to the Washington Wizards in the face of a wave of shootings that rocked the city. What makes the resistance to the change even stranger is that a perfectly excellent alternative has been suggested. All that needs to be done is to change &amp;quot;skin&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;cloud,&amp;quot; a poetic enough gesture. The authors of &amp;quot;The Heart of Everything That Is,&amp;quot; a recent biography of Sioux leader Red Cloud, have made an excellent case for the switch. The strategy and tactics designed by Red Cloud and carried out by Crazy Horse\u2014the wiry, young fellow tribesman Red Cloud promoted to field commander\u2014became a guerilla campaign that crippled the Army. Never before had Indians coordinated multiple raids and ambushes hundreds of miles apart or immediately followed up on successful attacks. In December 1866, when his army of braves descended on a frigid battlefield in north-central Wyoming and wiped out the U.S. soldiers under Lt. Col. William Fetterman&amp;#039;s command, Red Cloud morphed from a canny guerilla commander to a fearless warrior-chief who brought the U.S. government to its knees. Red Cloud was one of the most famous American Indians of the 1800s. His trips to Washington to represent the interests of the Sioux and other tribes were covered by newspapers from Chicago to New York to Boston. These same newspapers gave prominent position to his obituary when Red Cloud died in 1909, at age 88. What football team would not be honored to bear his name? And what general manager and coach would not use Red Cloud&amp;#039;s personal story as a template for creating a winning franchise? Named after such a proud and powerful winner, the Washington Red Clouds would be a lock to emulate their namesake and rout 49ers, defeat Raiders, humiliate Cowboys, pluck Eagles, turn back Texans, break Broncos and generally leave quivering the remaining would-be Giants and Titans of the National Football League. They wouldn&amp;#039;t have to change the fight songs. They wouldn&amp;#039;t have to change the shirts. They wouldn&amp;#039;t even have to change the icon itself, and in a single twist, the symbolic reality of the team would be inverted. All that was bad would be turned to good. So not only is the crisis intensifying with no end in sight, but an entirely appropriate solution has already been provided.  That&amp;#039;s what makes this story increasingly just plain weird. It&amp;#039;s no longer about politics and stubborness. The huge pots of money the NFL creates naturally provides a bubble for the league and for the owners within it. But how thick can that bubble be? It has been thick enough to ignore virtually all pressure from the United States government, the media and native groups themselves. What we&amp;#039;re going to find out is whether it&amp;#039;s thick enough to prevent the intrusion of reason itself and for how long. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29152/redskins-name-change/>