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eftychia: Me in kilt and poofy shirt, facing away, playing acoustic guitar behind head (Default)
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QotD

posted by [personal profile] eftychia at 05:25am on 2004-12-15

"The ultimate absurdity is that you can't play the word 'redskins' on ESPN." -- Eric Chaikin (director of Word Wars), on special rules for Scrabble tournaments that are televised, after champion Trey Wright caused a flap by playing an inappropriate word during the National Scrabble Championship. (Event 2004-08-05, AP story 2004-08-06, not sure which date the quote came from.)

[For folks who don't get the significance: ESPN, a sports network better known for football than Scrabble, shows National Football League games. The Washington, D.C. team is called the Redskins, a racially charged term deemed 'usually offensive' (though, to muddy the issue even farther, IIRC a recent poll indicated that most Native Americans do not favour changing the name of the team).]

Thanks to Eric Albert for pointing out the story on a mailing list.

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There are 17 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

Redskins are...

posted by [identity profile] bikerwalla.livejournal.com at 02:34am on 2004-12-15
Washington state, no?
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Re: Redskins are...

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 03:35am on 2004-12-15
Washington D.C. (actually, they play in a stadium in Maryland nowadays), not Washington state. The only NFL team in Washington state that I can think of off the top of my head is the Seattle Seahawks.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] bikerwalla.livejournal.com at 05:56am on 2004-12-15
I hang my head in shame.

I grew up in Texas and managed to stay ignorant of football.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] darwiniacat.livejournal.com at 08:37am on 2004-12-15
Consider yourself lucky!
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 10:01am on 2004-12-15
Managing to remain ignorant of football is startling.

Managing to remain ignorant of long division or The Beatles is shameful.

Startling != shameful.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] old-hedwig.livejournal.com at 05:43am on 2004-12-15
Most of us Washingtonians don't think of Redskin as being a racial term. It's just the name of a football team. With a whole lot of loyal crazy fans. The 'skins were decent when I was in grade school and Sonny Jerguson was playing. Then they were awful for years. Then, right when I and my age cohorts were coming of age - old enough to have jobs and cars and watch football games in bars instead of our parent's living rooms, still young enough and unencumbered by spouses and children with enough stamina to watch football in a bar until midnight and make it to work in the morning..we had Joe Theisman and the Hogs and Mark Mosley and life was wonderful. We all hoped Coach Gibbs would bring back the glory days (and our youth and good looks) but I'm afraid in vain.

OTOH, the Sox won the world series, so I have no complaints coming, sports wise.
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cellio: (Default)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] cellio at 07:42am on 2004-12-15
The link to the news story seems to be broken. I'm curious about what the inappropriate word was.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] dglenn.livejournal.com at 10:05am on 2004-12-15
Urk. I hate the way news links expire. I think the word in question was in fact 'redskins', but I'll try to verify that.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] scruffycritter.livejournal.com at 02:07pm on 2004-12-15
http://slate.msn.com/id/2105210/entry/0/

Looks to be "Lez" meaning "Lesbian"

"Redskins" was on the banned list too (and only because of the ESPN televised final). Ironically ESPN had no problems with this word...
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] darwiniacat.livejournal.com at 08:15am on 2004-12-15
Off topic question...

What's your puppy's name?

:)
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] en-ki.livejournal.com at 11:34am on 2004-12-15
Oh, hey, speaking of which, the Redskins election predictor is broken now. Oh, well.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] scruffycritter.livejournal.com at 02:08pm on 2004-12-15
Actually, The Redskins Election Predictor broke 4 years ago.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] en-ki.livejournal.com at 02:30pm on 2004-12-15
Regardless of whether Gore "won" the election in some sense, he conceded the office rather than setting up a Shadow Presidency, which would have been awesome, so he sucks. See?
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] scruffycritter.livejournal.com at 02:40pm on 2004-12-15
But if you assume the democrats were the incumbent party...then the predictor was right on the money this time.

Maybe it never broke then? :-)
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] en-ki.livejournal.com at 02:43pm on 2004-12-15
Hnr hnr hnr. If the Dems are the incumbents, I eagerly await their bloody suppression of the rebels holding, um, everything.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] scruffycritter.livejournal.com at 02:57pm on 2004-12-15
No no no. You have it backwards.

The Dems were the incumbents last time. That's when you would have seen an armed conflict.

Had the GOP been unfairly denied the whitehouse in that manner, then we sure would have had one.

The Dems however relied on the legal process and got laughed at.
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(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] cirith-ungol.livejournal.com at 08:40pm on 2004-12-15
Does that mean that this recipe and this product are politically incorrect? ;)
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