perfidy

Mike, here's a case in point about the PC brigades, and it involves Amherst, Massachusetts. Convergence, yes!

From the Amherst Republican (which I have never heard of, and I used to live there, so this may be total hearsay... which won't stop me), comes this story:

"By September, the UMass Gray Wolves men's and women's teams may be charging onto the field, while the gun-toting, single-gender Minuteman - a UMass symbol since 1972 - is sent to the showers for good...."Am I for the change? I'm for the process," UMass Athletic Director Ian J. McCaw said. That process began with the hiring of Phoenix Design Works of New York City, which introduced the Gray Wolves to eight focus groups involving 85 people.... Gray Wolves would be unique in Division I college sports, and it's indigenous to the area," McCaw said. "The design company expressed some concern with the single-gender ethnicity of the Minuteman, and the fact he's carrying a firearm (in the logo) is also a concern." McCaw said social and practical reasons exist for change. For one thing, the women's teams are called the Minutewomen, even though no colonial Minutewomen ever actually existed.

OH FOR CRISSAKES. If I had money, and I ever gave it to my alma mater, I'd stop doing that. I am ever so incensed! Some effing marketing team from New Effing York City thinks they know Massachusetts well enough to capture its essence in the beautiful and majestic Gray Wolf.

Luckily, some people get it. Also from the article:

According to Springfield Republican outdoors writer Frank Sousa, however, the portrayal of a cuddly wolf is ridiculous. "Wolves attack only the sick, injured and helpless," said Sousa, one of the region's foremost outdoors spokesmen. "Besides, the last gray wolf sighting around here was in the late 1890s, in a barrel outside Thompson's Clothing Store in Amherst after being shot in Northampton," Sousa said. "And those were skinned."

As Glenn Reynolds might say: Heh.