War of the honored symbols; or are they really nothing more than mascots?

The baseball fan in me noticed the reports that the Cleveland Indians are removing (finally!) the Chief Wahoo logo that has been a part of the team culture for some 70-plus years. A good thing to see the absurd, cartoonish image no longer linger.

Which of these will have louder, ...

Or maybe it won’t be that simple.

BECAUSE I ALSO noticed the reports about the ongoing dispute over Chief Illiniwek; the alleged honored symbol of the University of Illinois who was formally abolished years ago – only to have certain ideologically-inclined fans of the Fighting Illini act as though they’re engaged in a noble cause by retaining the chief’s memory.

... more obnoxious proponents?

I won’t be surprised to see Indians fans and conservative ideologues go out of their way to snatch up the remaining supply of Wahoo-logo merchandise (the team will drop the symbol come the 2019 season) and wear it as a measure of spite.

Which in a sense would be a good thing – we’d now clearly be able to identify the idiots in our society. They’d be the people wearing Wahoo-emblazoned caps, t-shirts and jerseys.

Just as we can tell the people at the University of Illinois who are determined to live in the past when their silly image of a native chief was regarded as dignified – rather than as the cartoon it truly was. In one sense, no better than that of Wahoo.

Am I only one who sees similar grin?

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Monday about a recent incident where a professor opposed to the chief imagery went into a restroom at what used to be called Assembly Hall, found an alumnus in chief regalia who apparently planned to make an unofficial appearance during a basketball game, and videotaped him.

The professor was arrested for supposedly violating laws against recording someone in a public restroom (a law intended to keep perverts from taking pictures of women during their private moments), but the state’s attorney for Champaign County refused to prosecute.

Of course, the chief backers are trying to portray the professor as some sort of pervert for using his camera in a restroom. Although it could also be argued that people determined to keep the chief image alive aren’t exactly the most rational of human beings.

Spokane Indians baseball figured out way to pay tribune

In short, the fact that the University of Illinois did away with Chief Illiniwek back in 2007 hasn’t brought this particular battle to a close. I expect that people on the Ohio scene will soon have similarly-absurd images to counter with.

PEOPLE DECIDING TO turn up at ballgames with their faces painted red and white to make themselves appear to be Chief Wahoo. An image that was officially commissioned by the ballclub back in 1947 by then-owner Bill Veeck (yes, the very same) who said he wanted something that, “would convey a spirit of pure joy and unbridled enthusiasm.”

Which strikes me as being as ridiculous as those Illinois alumni who argue on behalf of Illiniwek that he was an “honored symbol” who portrayed the people of the Illiniwek Confederation of old with dignity.

Is there really a difference?

He wasn’t a mascot, they’d argue, like Bucky Badger of the University of Wisconsin. You’d never catch the chief dancing with cheerleaders or giving a football quarterback a high-five following a successful touchdown pass.

They’d claim the dance he’d do at half-time of football and basketball games was actually authentic to the peoples who were native to what is now Illinois. I’ve known students who portrayed Illiniwek who claim that such clownish behavior would have got them in trouble.

NOT THAT ANY of that really matters. Throughout the years, it has adapted to being a caricature, one possibly just as ridiculous as that cartoonish Indian face with its ridiculous grin (so reminiscent of the “sambo” images that black people find so offensive) that some Indians fans will want to cling to.

Perhaps they will think this is part of their own ongoing fight to “Make America Great Again.” As though the idea of our society is based on images that kept certain peoples in their place and let them know they really didn’t fully belong.

Is calling this State Farm Center the real offense?

Not that I think there aren’t respectful ways of teams incorporating imagery of native tribes into their marketing. Although I suspect that many of the people who want screaming, screeching savages would consider those images dull and confusing.

Some people will fight for anything, no matter how ridiculous. Personally, if I were a Fighting Illini fan (my brother went to school there, I didn’t), I’d be more offended by the notion that the basketball team let their long-time home ditch the Assembly Hall moniker for State Farm Center. Now that’s something tacky.

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How about a stalk of corn or a soybean as the new Fighting Illini mascot?

I’m writing this commentary on behalf of my late brother Christopher, who was a student down in Champaign, Ill., during the late 1980s and often had his own thoughts about the concept of Chief Illiniwek.

Could a new symbol be found in any of these historic university images?

For those not in the know, Illiniwek was the student (often a white kid) who dressed up as a native American in full Indian headdress who would do a half-time dance at the football and basketball games of the University of Illinois.

PROPONENTS OF THE Chief (and I actually once knew a guy who included being “the chief” as among his collegiate accomplishments) always claimed the costume he wore and the dance he did were authentic to the tribes of the Illiniwek Confederation – the people who were native to what is now Illinois before the French and English came.

They always claimed it to be a symbol of significance, and something much more dignified than Bucky Badger – the mascot of the arch-rival University of Wisconsin.

Of course, some people saw the notion of a white kid dancing about pretending to be an Indian chief as bordering on racism – almost as offensive as someone wearing blackface claiming to pay tribute to African-American people.

When the NCAA in 2005 threatened to penalize the university by taking away their ability to host post-season play (which would have been an economic loss), Illinois gave in and Illiniwek became history.

THERE ARE THOSE students with an ideological agenda who go out of their way to keep alive the image of Illiniwek (the kind of young, conservative-minded people that ideologue radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh is depending upon to replenish his aging listeners). His very image has become a political statement.

For what it’s worth, my brother used to think Illiniwek was far from the “honored symbol” that his proponents claimed him to be. And yes, “honored symbol” is the phrase they insist MUST be used to refer to Illiniwek. My brother thought his fans were people in serious need of a date or two.

Although he also thought the people eager to oppose Illiniwek also had way too much free time on their hands. Either that, or they were using time that ought to e devoted to studying for their classes to fight a cause.

He’d wonder how they’d explain “C’s” and “D’s” on report cards that wound up in their tuition-paying parents’ hands. “I was fighting the Chief,” is perhaps what they’d say, while their parents groaned, looked skyward and questioned the point of that tuition check they had written out.

SO IT WILL be interesting to see what happens at the university, now that officials say they’re going to replace Illiniwek with the first official mascot ever of the University of Illinois.

No word on when they’ll have an image picked, or what it will be. Let’s only hope it doesn’t turn out to be something ridiculous like the tree that represents Stanford University.

Seriously, I could easily see the mascot being a giant corn stalk – for all the corn fields that comprise a significant segment of central Illinois farms. Either that, or soybeans. Who knows, maybe a giant soybean could be the Illinois mascot, with a giant container of soy milk as its companion?

This whole search for a mascot has the potential to be quite silly – particularly since Fighting Illini athletics have managed to make it through the past decade without Illiniwek or any official mascot to replace it.

IT’S NOT LIKE the presence of a costumed character will in any way enhance the quality of play on the field or court. It would take a program much more aggressive at recruiting athletes of quality from outside of rural Illinois in order to gain public attention – the reason many Chicagoans pay much more attention to their alma mater schools than the state university.

Lovie Smith as the Fighting Illini football coach is a more important move than a new mascot. Although if it turns out that Lovie brings winning ways to Champaign, then perhaps he will become the symbol of success the college is looking for.

Although I suspect many students feel there are more important things to worry about than this issue. And the ones who do find it a priority? I suspect they’re the ones having to explain the mediocre-to-low grades to their parents every semester.

Personally, I remember my own college days at Illinois Wesleyan University where we had Tommy Titan. He’s now an elaborately costumed character, although when I was a student, he was merely a chubby kid clad in a cheap gladiator-like costume. We IWU students didn’t feel any more or less enthusiasm as a result.

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How some people choose to expend energy; on warpath for pseudo-Chief

I’m not a University of Illinois alumnus, so I always have trouble identifying with the people who want to view it as a holy crusade, of sorts, to fight for the image of Chief Illiniwek.

The old stomping grounds of generations of pseudo-Chiefs

 

My alma mater’s mascot/honored symbol/whatever label you try to tag it with, was a student in a Titan costume – and a cheap one at that. It wasn’t something somebody would get upset over.

YET TO THIS day, there are people who want to view it as a travesty that the university did away with the image of a white student doing what was supposed to be a sacred native dance while wearing a tribal costume that was supposed to be distinctly authentic to the tribes native to what is now Illinois.

Of course, the matter that was bringing out all this imagery? The notion that the Fighting Illini sports teams might get their butts kicked a little less viciously than they usually do.

In all, not exactly something that the real natives would have ever used such sacred imagery for. Which is the point that the non-Indian tribal people always miss when they try to defend such things as Chief Wahoo in Cleveland or the Washington Redskins football team!

The distortion of native images is so laughable. It is more ridiculous than the distortion that occurred when the hippy-dippy types of the 1960s got themselves all into the images and cultures of India.

BUT IN A comical way that no real Indian person would ever do. Just like no real person whose ethnic origins trace back to the indigenous tribes of this nation (a fake Indian, because of the fact that Christopher Columbus was not so much a discoverer of nations, but was lost!) would ever think there was anything real about Illiniwek.

Which is what makes their fight seem so trivial.

Ever since Illiniwek (I actually once met a former Illiniwek back in the days when I worked at the state Capitol in Springfield – he’s now a corporate executive for railroad interests) disappeared in 2007, there has been a group calling itself the Honor the Chief Society.

Chief as long-gone as this melted ice sculpture

They are a batch of disgruntled student types who want to think the hippy-dippy types have taken over the world from decent, respectable types like themselves! Which means they think the rest of the world should shut up and do what they tell them to do.

THEY WENT SO far as to try to register the Chief Illiniwek logo for themselves, claiming the university had abandoned it.

Which has resulted in lawsuits, legal action and attorneys getting richer and richer – because the university didn’t want anyone doing something with the logo that would have reflected negatively on the Urbana-based college.

The two sides came to an agreement this week that really maintains the status quo. They can’t create an Indian mascot and call it the New Chief Illiniwek. They can’t make any merchandise of their own with the Illiniwek logo.

They can make their own merchandise with the phrase “Honor the Chief.” Although their website and promotional materials will be required to contain the phrase, “The Honor the Chief Society is not sponsored, licensed, approved or endorsed by the University of Illinois.”

IN SHORT, THE great Illiniwek legal battle resulted in the group being treated like a pack of cigarettes – they have to have a warning label of sorts to let you know that something bad exists here.

And in return for accepting a warning label, the group will get to sell t-shirts and perhaps a coffee mug or two. Is this really a fight about merchandising?

All of which I suspect will only be purchased by people more interested in making conservative ideological statements. While the student body will shrug off the issue as a whole lot of nonsense about nothing.

Because the rest of us who attended a college and that type of experience remember the parties, the pressure of classes, the intellectual rewards and even some of the ballgames – not the student who wore a funny costume because he wasn’t good enough to actually play on one of the athletic teams.

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