Do The Right Thing, Even If You Don't Want To... And It Just Might Be Profitable, Too

It's depressing when someone has to be dragged kicking and screaming to do the right thing... and then turns around and makes a ginormous profit on the process.

This thought first occurred to me last month, during the uproar over basketball's L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling's racist remarks -- while the NBA promptly assessed a $2.5 million fine (relatively speaking, chump change to a billionaire), if the forced sale of his team goes through, he stands to profit to the tune of more than $1.5 billion. Which is real money by anybody's standards. (What will actually happen is anyone's guess, as the matter continues to be locked in the courts.)

And here's another example: today's New York Times reported -- as did most other major media outlets -- that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had stripped the Washington Redskins football team of six of its trademarks because the name is "disparaging" to Native Americans (full article, by Ken Belson and Edward Wyatt, here).

An attorney for the team was dismissive:  "We have seen this story before. And just like last time, today's ruling will have no effect at all on the team's ownership of and right to use the Redskins name and logo." (Full statement, as .pdf, here)

"Just like last time" refers to a 1999 trademark office decision cancelling the trademark registrations, which was reversed on appeal by a federal district court judge in 2003.

Even if the current Patent Office decision were to be upheld, it wouldn't stop the team from continuing to sell Redskins' glasses, T-shirts, blankets, and assorted other paraphernalia, although it would make it harder for them to rein in the counterfeiters.

Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder has said that he would "never" change the name, and that "Redskins" was "never a label. It was, and continues to be, a badge of honor" (from a letter to the Washington Post, published 9 Oct 2013; available here).

The truth is that the world has changed since 1999. More of us understand the power of words, and especially of slurs. If it were my team, knowing that a great number of people who could be described as Redskins consider it a slur and not a "badge of honor", I'd have changed the name as soon as I was made aware of the problem. Snyder clearly needs some more convincing.

And if Snyder is smart -- and not just an insensitive racist -- he's busy meeting with marketing and branding folks right now, thinking up a new name and a new logo. Because all his team's biggest fans will be lining up to buy blankets, glasses, T-shirts, and all the other tchotchkes with the new name and logo, making a satisfying ka-ching sound in the football team's cash registers, and in Snyder's pockets. Sigh.