30 most vicious John Oliver take downs
By Jeremy Dick
8. John Oliver rips apart the racist Washington Redskins
In recent years the Washington Redskins NFL football team has come under fire for their name. Native Americans find the name and logo to be offensive to their culture, and a movement was started to get the team to change it. A judge agreed, and the federal trademark registrations for the team were canceled. This was done citing a law that states names which may “disparage” cannot be protected.
But instead of apologizing or admitting any wrongdoing, the team owners insisted there was nothing wrong with the name. In their defense, they released a list of names of other “offensive” patents which had been approved by the government. This was where things really got interesting, as demonstrated by John Oliver on Last Week Tonight.
In an official appeal, the Redskins argued that everything is potentially disparaging to somebody. They included a never-ending list of active patents for things like “MILF Weed” and the “Shank the Bitch board game”. The argument was that if all of these other offensive names can keep their patents, why would something like the Redskins team not be able to?
The point, as Oliver mentioned isn’t that the Redskins team name isn’t potentially disparaging to someone. It is already disparaging to a specific group of people. You can’t say the same for MILF Weed.
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