March 11, 2007
Redskins cartoon censored
Hey—you can’t draw that!HARD-HITTING: Milt Priggee tried and failed to get Washington's Spokesman Review to publish his condemnation of racism against Native Americans in both 1988 and 1992, each year the NFL's Washington Redskins reached the Super Bowl. His editor, according to Priggee, felt the cartoon itself was racist.
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5 comments:
Writerfella here --
writerfella is refreshed to hear the statement, "Invent writing. Democracy follows..." But even in writerfella's own home town, the local newspaper for a time mostly eschewed writerfella's editorial letters after one particular letter in 1998. The local American Indian Exposition experienced a crisis: a new Expo president was elected by Expo Native attendees but the incumbent refused to acknowledge his electoral defeat. Both sides claimed occupancy of the office. Collusively and unbidden, the Anadarko Chamber of Commerce, the Oklahoma Department of Tourism, and the local newspaper decided somehow that they were empowered to decide the outcome of the debacle. Since the Expo ordinarily was granted $50,000 in state tourism funds in any recent given year, the triumvirate threw out the vote of the Native attendees and picked the incumbent as having won the election. writerfella immediately wrote an editorial letter that this event marked the first time that non-Native entities had intruded upon what is the only totally Native-owned ceremonial authority, overturned a vote of the people, and more or less had stolen the celebration for themselves. The letter was rejected but writerfella then got the letter published in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Kansas City, and Dallas newspapers, with the local TV stations becoming suddenly attentive to what had occurred. All parties backed off, the election results were reinstated, but the Expo later was denied state funds for about four years. And no more such editorial letters then were are allowed for writerfella in his own home town. The newspaper and writerfella remain cordial and various articles were published each year therein ABOUT writerfella. But no letters...
THEN in 2005 at Xmas, the local paper published an article by the Comanche Chairman that plagiarized from writerfella's copyrighted TV play, "A Star, A Child, And A Promise," and purported that it was an old Comanche Nativity legend. Oops! Talk about crawfishing, chagrin, contrition, remiss, and retraction! Now, writerfella holds the Comanche Chairman by the short ones at whatever time he will choose to press the issue, writerfella's editorial letters both are welcomed and praised in the local paper, and Democracy seemingly was restored to him. And all he did was to write as the writer fella he always has been.
The editorial cartoon with the aspersive football helmets likely never will see the light of print because it is too logical, too forthright, and contains too many of the dominant culture's favorite spoken epithets. Once again, it only is Congress that is forbidden to abridge a free and unfettered press. writerfella remembers a famous SHOE comic strip: Cosmo Fishhawk asks, 'Why won't you publish my article? I have a right to my opinions!' And Shoe the editor answers, 'Maybe. But I've got the keys to the pressroom...'
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
The Internet has increased the transparency of (tribal) government in recent years. Which is one reason I don't think the corruption scenario in SCALPED is plausible.
Writerfella here --
Mayhaps, but the collusion here in Anadarko involved no tribal governments. Rather, it was a dodecate intertribal coalition founded by a Kiowa, Robert Goombi, in the 1940s after the longtime annual Indian Fair was evicted from Craterville in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Ft. Sill by the Interior Department. Twelve tribes founded the Indian Exposition Commission with no funding or other inputs from the governments of their tribes. Thus, it is a corporation totally under Native proprietary aegis. And it still is, even though they now receive state tourism funds once again. It was no Angie Debo action on the part of writerfella for sure, but he certainly was not going to stand around and see nothing done...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
In this context, "government" refers to any governing body.
Writerfella here --
Even of a 'corporation'? Wow, no wonder the ENRON debacle was solved so fast by GW!
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
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