Self-hating cultural identity theft.
A recent news item brought to my attention by local soccer-affiliated Tumblr personality Holly Go Nightly:
Like it or not the Kansas City Wizards is no longer the name of the Major League Soccer team that resides in Kansas City, Kansas. The organization announced yesterday that it has a new logo and a new name, Sporting Kansas City.
Huh? Huh? Did I call this, or what? That’s even better than the name I suggested, which was “Village West Rangers.” This bodes well for the entire enterprise, as far as I am concerned. Except:
The name change using “Sporting” has been more than a little controversial as many American soccer fans feel the logo and name are Europosing or as Brian Straus wrote at Fanhouse, “the name Sporting Kansas City seems to embody the worst kind of self-hating cultural identity theft.”
Heh heh. Because it’s the inalienable birthright of every American billionaire to give their teams crappy names based on singular nouns, isn’t it? Good old American names, like “Fire,” “Storm,” “MudDawgs” or “DawgStorm.” I was talking to some friends the other day and we predicted when Los Angeles inevitably kidnaps the Vikings in a few years, Minneapolis will be without a team for awhile until some local captain of industry strong-arms the legislature into building him a zillion-dollar taxpayer-funded stadium in the exurbs and lures an expansion team and then instead of having the “Vikings” they’ll be called the “Minnesota Chill” or “Minnesota BlizzardDawgz” or something equally horrible. And they’ll have a 2-12 record for fifteen years and lose every game to the L.A. Vikings and I won’t care, because I just learned to make cyanotype photographs last night and I bought a Holga camera and I will spend football season in my basement making blue 19th Century photographs of my neighborhood and I don’t anticipate any football team in Minnesota will ever have as hilarious a season as this one ever again so why even bother to pay attention anyway.
P.S. - That last bit of unresolved business from the soccer club post: the San Jose EarthquakeDawgs, who actually play in Santa Clara, will be known as “Mission Santa Clara SC,” in deference to the old mission located there. And because one team should have “SC” in it, since “soccer” is what people call it. I hope this meets with your approval.
P.P.S. - I forgot to mention that the word “BlizzardDawgzz” has four “z”s in it.
