April 20, 2011

Speakin' of Stereotypes

This is one of the most valuable logos in all of college sports. This logo, which debuted in 1965, has got it all: a drunken, pugnacious, wearin'-of-the-green leprechaun puttin' his dukes up. (Do Irish-Americans drop their terminal "G's"? Guess so, judging from this ...) It's even got subtle cultural signifiers like St. Brendan's haircut. The only things missing are red hair (which wouldn't fit ND uniforms' green, gold, and blue color scheme) and a knocked-over barstool.

59 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish are as much of a stereotype as the Cleveland Indians.

So how come the liberals never pay attention to the former, only the latter? Huh? Huh?

Anonymous said...

Why not just dump all of the "People of Color" team names and only use ones that have White origins? E.g., the Aztecs could become the Visigoths, the Redskins the Teutons, the Indians the Conquistadors, etc. In one fell swoop, we could simultaneously make both "People of Color" activists and White nationalists happy.It's a win-win idea.

Anonymous said...

Mean lookin' too, Nixon must've had something to do with it!

Anonymous said...

Steve, the logo does not appear drunk. where do you get that?

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer never met a stereotype he didn't love.

Thripshaw said...

Ah, there, there, fella... the Foitin' Oirish...

We don't sorve Guinness here, sor...

Will ya be after havin' some doivairsity then?

RS said...

Not to mention that the Paddy looks very wacky and cheesey; basically he's a mockery. The red man in the Redskins logo is the picture of dignity, though I'm not sure what the dignity of the appellation has been historically.

The Cleveland Indians logo is another goofy one. One of the Braves logos is non-mocking but definitely kinda savage.

Anonymous said...

But this was self-inflicted by Irish Catholics at Notre Dame University. Had a non-Catholic Wasp college done it, maybe Irish would have complained.

It's like blacks don't mind calling eachother "the joint between the thigh and the lower leg/young female."

Shouting Thomas said...

They killed Chief Illiniwek, the mascot of my alma mater, the University of Illinois!

Cold blooded murder!

And the Chief and the marching band were the only reasons my mom liked to go to the football games.

Whiskey said...

The Whittier Poets and the Slippery Rock Hard Rockers are the two best team names in sports. That is all.

The Gilroy Gamelans said...

What about discrimination by way of omission?

Why are Asians not represented in any sport mascot? Why not the San Francisco Samurai?

Are you saying Asians lack any of the qualities like bravery, strength or fortitude that teams promote in their mascots.

And what about SE Asia Indians, Philipinos or Indonesians?

We truely have a long way to go to become an inclusive society...

Truth said...

"So how come the liberals never pay attention to the former, only the latter? Huh? Huh"

Because the IRISH don't pay attention to it. Is this one of the great riddles of our time now?

RKU said...

Well, sports teams have traditionally been named for animals or ethnic or other groups of people know for their strength, determination, fierceness, courage, etc. That's why you get the "Fighting Irish" and "the Trojans," all the endless tribes of American Indians ("Indians", "Braves", "Aztecs", "Apaches"), and also "the Steelers", "the Packers", "the Warriors", etc.

My impression is that 95% of American Indians generally liked the idea of sports teams being named after them, or at least didn't mind, and just a tiny handful of noisy activists complained, with their complaints then being massively magnified through the bull-horn of the left-liberal MSM. Presumably, if the Left had still been traditionally Marxist rather than ethnically-focused, the denunciations would have been more directed against the Steelers and the Packers for degrading the working-class, despite 99% of the working-class liking those names.

I'd think there are two underlying factors governing the MSM reaction. First, for some MSM people the issue was just a tool to beat and critique the established mainstream values of society. Second, MSM people are extraordinarily cowardly regarding ethnic-denunciations, so even if just a single Amerind in the whole country complains, the entire MSM might easily turn tail and run on the matter rather than resisting. My guess is that the second factor had the numbers but the first had the intensity.

Anonymous said...

Add 12 kids and a wife with two black eyes and it's perfect.

Drunken Paddy said...

What if Howard University, BYU and Yeshiva U just "went with it"? How cool would that be?

If memory serves didn't the Stanford student body vote to change the team name to the cool Robber Barons rather than the lame pseudo-Cantabrigian "Cardinal"? 1970 or so? After Jim Plunkett any way.

Average Joe said...

So how come the liberals never pay attention to the former, only the latter?

Jews don't mind it when white gentiles are shown negatively. That's why most of the ethnic stereotypes that you see on TV shows and the movies relate to white Christians e.g. drunken Irish, mafia-connected Italians, dimwitted Poles, etc.

Marvin said...

The ND Fighting Irishman has under gone one PC change: He used to have a burning cigarette hanging from his mouth.

Anonymous said...

That sort of nose is not atypical in Irishmen too. Same thing for the non-existent upper lip.

DCThrowback said...

The best thing about the Fightin' Whities controversy of the early aughts were that White people loved the idea. I guess a refined sense of humor and the ability to not take oneself too seriously might be positively correlated with IQ.

The intramural team that designed the shirt meant them to be insulting - but obviously it had the opposite effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Whites

Anonymous said...

Where does it show or say that the mascot fellow is drunk?

Anonymous said...

Average Joe made an interesting observation the portrayal of white Gentiles in a negative light is accepted, if not actively promoted.

anony-mouse said...

Ahem.

Sorry to spoil the fun, but its fairly accepted that people are allowed to speak derogatorily about themselves, almost to their hearts content. The trouble generally comes when others do the same.

For example Blacks repeatedly use a certain word starting with 'N' that others aren't supposed to.

If the Cleveland Indians had been started by Indians in Cleveland there would not be problems.

Anonymous said...

How long before blacks demand that sports teams have African or black names/themes? NY Zulus, Charlotte Freedom Marchers, Los Angeles Masai, etc. After all, many players are black.

So far, non-whites have been led to believe that a team named after their nationality or culture is an insult, but it won't be long before leftists and people-of-color start complaining that team names are too 'Euro-centric'--Vikings, Spartans, Trojans, etc.

Anonymous said...

"My impression is that 95% of American Indians generally liked the idea of sports teams being named after them, or at least didn't mind, and just a tiny handful of noisy activists complained..."

True, and that tiny handful got their silly ideas(and encouragement) from white leftists and liberal Jews.
In my college, the kid who led the movement to change the college team name was some ridiculous Jewish kid.

Anonymous said...

If we really want to be honest, team names and mascots should be based on social reality.

So, college football and basketball teams should really be called...

1. Michigan "Inner-city thugs on athletic scholarship"

2. UCLA "Barely literate punks who never cracked open a book"

3. Georgetown "Idiots and morons who would likely be behind bars or dealing drugs if not ball-dunking ability".

etc.

Anonymous said...

My impression is that 95% of American Indians generally liked the idea of sports teams being named after them, or at least didn't mind, and just a tiny handful of noisy activists complained

It's been my experience that the ones who get all butthurt over things like this are 1/16th "Native American" (i.e., they've never seen a reservation and couldn't tell a Pima from a Choctaw).

Anonymous said...

How long before a sports team honors gay people? San Francisco Fruits. Green Bay Transsexuals.
Los Angeles Fairies. The mascot should be a riot.

Anonymous said...

I think the main reason Irish people don't mind the logo is because it's f#ckin awesome!!

Dan in DC

Anonymous said...

Yeh, angry, not drunk. And it should read 'speakin' o' stereotypes'. You're in poor shape recently lad.

Captain Jack Aubrey said...

"The Whittier Poets and the Slippery Rock Hard Rockers are the two best team names in sports. That is all." - Whiskey

Really, that's it? Ya sure? You're not going to add a bit about how the Slippery Rock mascot aids in inspiring its graduates to turn themselves into Alpha males, move to New York, and sweep up all the women for themselves, leaving all the Betas from the Purdue Boilermakers ar home alone on Friday wanking off while playing World of Warcraft or Grand Theft Auto XVIII?

"The only things missing are red hair (which wouldn't fit ND uniforms' green, gold, and blue color scheme) and a knocked-over barstool."

But to be honest, those damned, bastard Presbyterian Scots have them beat on the red hair thing. 13% of Scots are natural redheads, compared to only 10% of the Irish.

TGGP said...

Steve, you misspelled o'.

TGGP said...

Shoot, beaten by anonymous.

Anonymous said...

"I think the main reason Irish people don't mind the logo is because it's f#ckin awesome!!"

You gotta be kidding. It's one of the reasons the Irish freak me out. Few people made themselves out to be so unlikable. The Irish brains are located in the fists than in the head.

Anonymous said...

And Irish have weird funny skin.

Batam said...

The ugliest stereotypes, like liberals being closet esclavagists or Muslims odious racists , are peddled in this piece about a famous pirate's mother.

Average Joe said...

I guess a refined sense of humor and the ability to not take oneself too seriously might be positively correlated with IQ.

Then why do Ashkenazi Jews complain so much about anti-Semitism? If any sports team decided to use a symbol called "The Greedy Jew" do you really think that Abe Foxman and the other ADL types would just laugh it off?

Anonymous said...

"Where does it show or say that the mascot fellow is drunk?"

C'mon. He's Irish. He's fighting. Do I have to draw you a picture?

SFG said...

"San Francisco Fruits. Green Bay Transsexuals.
Los Angeles Fairies. The mascot should be a riot."

Oh, there are better stereotypes for a football team. The San Francisco Leathermen's colors will be black and blue (this is the actual color of the S/M Pride Flag--I am not making this up), will have male cheerleaders in assless chaps and leather jackets carrying whips, and can go with cheers like

"One! Two! Three! Four!
Whip 'em till they hit the floor!
Five! Six! Seven! Eight!
We can kill the fucking straights!"

What do you think?

IHTG said...

Average Joe:
Well, there's these guys:
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/ajax-a-jewish-club-spite-itself

green eyes said...

"You gotta be kidding. It's one of the reasons the Irish freak me out. Few people made themselves out to be so unlikable. The Irish brains are located in the fists than in the head."

Not according to early 20th century, world-class double agent Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who took his wife's last name, because, "Everybody hates the Jews but everybody loves the Irish."
Worked for him--even in England.

But is Anonymous-the-Hibernia-phobe, regular petty-insulter on any thread about the Irish, a relative of a British soldier killed in the troubles? Or was his heart broken by a wild Irish rose?
Is he an ex-resident of South Side Boston? Person of color? Or just a WASP being a WASP?
I didn't believe the latter was still a force to be reckoned with until I reread certain material on President Kennedy. Oh, not the childhood, historic stuff, but the men surrounding him in the political realm of mid-20th century; the higher he got the more "there" they all were. Suddenly, their names (McGeorge Bundy, fcol, you don't saddle a kid with a name like that without a serious reason), their backgrounds, their lineages, their schools, their marriages, their connections, their fraternities and "secret societies", their professional networks... Mostly WASPs or "Scotch-Irish", some German and Dutch, mostly related if only distantly. All of a sudden it clicked--this stuff was real, at least in the political and corporate world of the era. I'd thought it was a distant memory evoked only for dramatic effect. I mean, who cared any more about Catholic/Protestant, Irish/Anglo-Saxon, blah blah, with so many more starkly black and white differences to preoccupy us all, excuse the pun. But apparently it did matter. 5th cousinship is thicker than none.

As for the "fightin' Irish" mascot being "awesome", that's because he's really a leprechaun. You don't mess with them. They know where the gold is you see.

Anonymous said...

"I guess a refined sense of humor and the ability to not take oneself too seriously might be positively correlated with IQ."

"Then why do Ashkenazi Jews complain so much about anti-Semitism? If any sports team decided to use a symbol called 'The Greedy Jew' do you really think that Abe Foxman and the other ADL types would just laugh it off?"

Because they're afraid the less intelligent gentiles might not get the joke and come after Jews. It's like witty nerdy Jewish kids got beaten up by 'big dumb polacks' who felt insulted by 'clever Jew'.
But if you get Jews together in a room, and they talk like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de9W06s2aCs

Anonymous said...

Funny you should run this the same week Tony Bourdain's show went to Southie to drink with the Irish thugs!

Brutus

Anonymous said...

I'm Irish.

Most of the stereotypes about the Irish: drunk, violent and stupid, were quite true in the 19th century. Thomas Sowell's thesis on Black IQ is based in large part on the history of the Irish in America.

As he rightly points out the IQs of the Irish in Boston around the time of the American Civil War was around 85. Early Italian immigrants also had IQs of around 85. Both groups were also associated with organized and unorganized crime.

The Protestants back then had IQs about 100. So being Irish was a marker for bad behavior and led to those (probably apocryphal) "No Irish need apply" signs.

But the Irish and the Italians immigrants were transformed in America. Nowadays they have IQs and criminal records no different from those of the founding Protestants.

Sowell freely admits that his own group is violent and stupid but he expects his fellow Blacks to grow smarter and more peaceable just as the Irish did.

Albertosaurus

Adam Greenwood said...

Another instantiation of the principle that ethnic groups are allowed to acknowledge the truth of their own stereotypes.

-Osvaldo M.

Svigor said...

Average Joe made an interesting observation the portrayal of white Gentiles in a negative light is accepted, if not actively promoted.

Practically speaking, "white gentiles" is redundant. The Ashkenazi-heavy media doesn't mind slandering whites, period, because white="gentile," and Ashkenazis only consider themselves "half white" (i.e., white when it's good for them).

Svigor said...

C'mon. He's Irish. He's fighting. Do I have to draw you a picture?

LOL! Anon FTW.

corvinus said...

HAHA! Got a kick out of that.

BTW: I think the -in' thing is indeed part of the Irish stereotype, since as far as I know, the Irish language does not have words with final -ng. A final unstressed -n, though, is extremely common. -in', though, is not limited to Irish.

As for Irish pronouncing th as t+h: this is a Cork accent, since Irish does not have the Germanic "th" sound. The Dublin accent DOES have "th", because it was settled by English Pale Catholics during Elizabethan times who went native.

Dutch Boy said...

Who was doing IQ tests in the 19th century to determine that the Irish and Italians had IQs of 85 while the Protestants had IQs of 100? The first tests were not administered in America until 1916.

Anonymous said...

"I'm Irish. "

I talked to a guy from Ireland and he doesn't really consider American Irish to be really Irish. There's probably some truth to that. If you are of German descent,but born here, do Germans really consider you to be fully German. Sure, you have the genes, but not the culture.

Average Joe said...

I talked to a guy from Ireland and he doesn't really consider American Irish to be really Irish. There's probably some truth to that. If you are of German descent,but born here, do Germans really consider you to be fully German. Sure, you have the genes, but not the culture.

Genes are generally more important than culture. I think it was the Duke of Wellington who said that being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse.

Average Joe said...

Sowell freely admits that his own group is violent and stupid but he expects his fellow Blacks to grow smarter and more peaceable just as the Irish did.

The Irish likely became more peaceful and more intelligent because the dumb, violent ones either ended up dead or in jail for the rest of their lives so they could not pass on their bad genes.

Anonymous said...

Why are Asians not represented in any sport mascot? Why not the San Francisco Samurai?

One reason might be that the Samurai were not all that admirable.

First of all they were lousy soldiers. They fought amongst themselves for over a century before the Tokugawa shogunate but being on an island they had little opportunity to engage other nation's troops. The big exception were the two Mongol invasions - and the Samurai lost big time.

If you want an Asian group to admire for their ferocity and skill, the Mongols are a much better choice.

The Samurai came to their apex in the Tokugawa Shogunate. In this period however they were largely what we would call today welfare bums. The government arranged it so that they didn't have modern weapons and had extraordinary social privileges. They were hated my the oppressed peasants. Skip the Kurosawa Samurai films and catch "Red Lion".

Three other points: Like the ancient Greeks the Samurai had a system of homosexual patronage where old men got young boys. You don't see any of this in Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai but it is hinted at in the Japanese film of the same name. In that film a young Samurai has his top knot shorn by Meiji troops. That was part of the Meiji westernization campaign. The young man is quite upset as well he should be. The top knot was a sign in Samurai culture that he was no longer subject to sexual submission to older Samurai. Haircuts were an important feature of Japanese modernization.

The Samurai were not good swordsmen and the Katana was a lousy sword. Many people fall for the myths of the Samurai sword. Indeed it's a favorite feature of the Mythbusters TV show. The sword is made by folding the metal over and over. This however is not a Japanese only technique. The Romans had used it a thousand years before and had abandoned it for better methods. The folds' purpose is only to distribute the carbon evenly. It's just a mixing technique.

The Katana is also made of different grades of steel forge welded together. This was always a problem for these swords. In combat they often delaminated.

Richard Burton - the explorer not the movie star - has a book on sword fighting. In his history he shows how in the West slicing swords lost out to thrusting swords. It simple geometry and physics. You have more reach with a foil or Épée. Lighter swords can be wielded in one hand.

Finally the Samurai didn't duel much. They carried two swords: a long one used to cut up the enemy and a short one to use on himself. Samurai resolved disputes by Seppuku decrees from above.

Albertosaurus

SouthernAnonyia said...

"You gotta be kidding. It's one of the reasons the Irish freak me out. Few people made themselves out to be so unlikable. The Irish brains are located in the fists than in the head."

If they are so unlikable then why does every other American with even as little as 1/8 Irish ancestry claim to be Irish? I think you're wrong, Anon.

Anonymous said...

"If they are so unlikable then why does every other American with even as little as 1/8 Irish ancestry claim to be Irish? I think you're wrong, Anon."

Same reason why every other white teenager tries to act like an inner-city negro.

none of the above said...

RKU:

I'd guess a bigger reason than ideology is ratings. A controversy over global warming or tax reform is boring and inaccessible to most viewers. A controversy about renaming the Redskins to some more "sensitive" name gets viewers nice and mad, and is accessible to even the leftmost tail of the bell curve.

TV news (especially 24 HR news) needs this kind of pretend controversy every day, to fill airtime on days when nobody's flown jets into buildings or led the LAPD on a low speed chase through town on camera.

Anonymous said...

Anon:
In 1980, the Pekin, Illinois high school team changed its mascot to the Dragons. Its older one was the Pekin Chinks. So there's one example, though not an especially flattering one.

ben tillman said...

As for the "fightin' Irish" mascot being "awesome", that's because he's really a leprechaun. You don't mess with them. They know where the gold is you see.

Everyone knows where the gold's at: Mobile, Alabama.

Anonymous said...

Capt. Jack Aubrey, you rock. You are one of my favorite posters.

Anonymous said...

I miss the days when the ORangemen of Syracuse was a protestant, catholic fighting Cavelier.