December Cover of 'The New Yorker' Skewers Washington Redskins' Name

The team who must not be named received its latest satirical lashing Friday with The New Yorker’s unveiling of its December cover. 

Drawn by artist Bruce McCall, the image depicts a trio of colonial age Native Americans arriving at a Washington Redskins Thanksgiving party.

McCall told The New Yorker’s Mina Kaneko and Francoise Mouly that the cover isn’t supposed to be profound. He just wanted to transport the themes of modern Redskins apologists back in time to meet the Native American ancestors they claim to be honoring: 

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New Yorker cover brings Redskins name controversy to Thanksgiving: Bruce McCall discusses his cover for… http://t.co/G3PBz1XpW5 #ForTheWin

— SPORTS x Kibow (@SportsKibow) November 21, 2014"

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It’s not profound, you know—nothing I do is profound—but I wanted to address the whole kerfuffle over the Redskins name. This is 2014, and it seems a little late to be dealing with that stuff…We did everything to the Indians that we could, and it’s still going on. It seems crude and callous. Names like the Atlanta Braves come from another time. So, in my cover, I’ve brought the cultural arrogance of one side back to the sixteen-hundreds and the first Thanksgiving dinner, just to see what would happen.

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As you can see, the Native Americans appear confused and angered. Whether that’s due to the settlers' ham-fisted appropriation of Native American culture or the poor play of the team on the field, we’ll never know.

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