Macon Bacon: The war on mascots moves to inanimate objects
My high school mascot was an Indian, in the days before anyone had concluded that what seemed to us to be a position of honor was in fact an insult.
I wasn’t there when the mascot was chosen so I can’t say for sure, but I doubt the conversation went like this: “Those stupid, dirty, no-account Indians — let’s make them the mascot of our high school. That will show them.”
My college mascot was a mountaineer, and to date no hillbillies have marched on campus claiming traumatization at the sight of a student clad in animal hides running around and shooting off a musket at football games. But in today’s complex cultural atmosphere, would anyone be entirely surprised if this were to happen?
I say this because our national War on Mascots has now focused not just on people, but on inanimate objects incapable of defending themselves.
According to The Washington Post, a letter was signed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a D.C.-based nonprofit organization that promotes plant-based diets, arrived at the offices of the Georgia-based Macon Bacon baseball team demanding a change in the squad’s mascot because “Macon Bacon’s glorification of bacon, a processed meat that raises the risk of colorectal cancer and other diseases, sends the wrong message.”
The president of the Macon Bacon, Brandon Raphael, initially thought the letter was a joke, and only realized it wasn’t when the Committee for Responsible Medicine bought billboard space in the city that read “Macon: Keep Bacon Off Your Plate.”
I would argue that he was right the first time, it was a joke. What are they supposed to do, change their name to the Macon Soy-Based Milk-Like Product?
This is why we can’t cure cancer. Physicians are too busy spending research money on stuff like this. Although somehow I doubt the PCR represents doctors in the main.
Certainly they too must frown on the Hickory Crawdads, given the amounts of heavy metals and flesh eating viruses in our ocean’s seafoods. Maybe they root for Mr. Celery, the mascot of the Wilmington Blue Rocks,
It seems weird that you can’t even name a sports team today without getting in trouble. As we’ve bounced around from Indian to Native American to Indigenous People — typing to find a word that will somehow undo three centuries of atrocities and land grabs — maybe it would help to lie prone on the psychiatrist’s couch repeating “It’s only a mascot, it’s only a mascot.”
It may not bring clarity, but it might convince someone somewhere that the Macon Psychiatrists would be a great name for a sports team.
After we’ve been through Redskins, Tribe, Midgets, Colonials (colonialism = bad), Aztecs, Rippers, Nads (OK, maybe that one could have gone through one more round of focus groups), Arabs, Orphans (mascot of Centralia High School in Illinois, whose girls’ teams are the Annies), Chief Nok-a-Homa, Redmen and on and on, you would think naming a team after a foodstuff would have been the last safe haven.
But no.
Anna Herby, the committee’s nutrition education program manager, told the Post “Bacon is so popular, and we just don’t hear enough about the risks of certain foods. What we do is just do our best to change that environment so that it’s easier for people to make those healthy choices.”
OK, but if you’re deciding what to have for dinner based on sporting mascots, I just hope you’re not a fan of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.
And of course what Very Serious People never seem to realize is that, if you’re the Macon Bacon, you can’t buy this kind of publicity. “Macon Bacon will be sizzling forever and will not consider a name change ever,” Raphael gleefully declared at a news conference.
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Pity he didn’t make reference to the game’s heart-stopping action.
Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Bacon is the latest target in push to change names of mascots
