[Vision2020] Peculiar Naming Rites

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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February 20, 2013
Peculiar Naming Rites By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

The Postal Service is looking to launch a clothing line.

Honest.

This is not make-believe, like the story about Chuck Hagel giving a speech
to Friends of Hamas. Dan Friedman, a New York Daily News reporter, says he
thinks he inadvertently started that one when he called a Republican aide
and asked if there were any rumors floating around about the nominee for
secretary of defense. As an example, Friedman said, he asked about speaking
fees from anything like “the Junior League of Hezbollah” or “Friends of
Hamas.” Soon the idea was all over the right-wing media.

“The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East,
that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one
could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed —
let alone that a former senator would speak to them,” Friedman wrote.

I think I speak for us all when I say: Hahahaha.

Also, as long as we’re at it, Sarah Palin is not working for Al Jazeera or
teaching at Harvard. Those stories both started on a humor Web site. And it
seems extremely doubtful that the 19th-century presidential candidate John
Charles Frémont actually ate anybody when he was lost in the mountains
during his exploring days. Also, contrary to rumors of the time, Thaddeus
Stevens — the congressman played by Tommy Lee Jones in “Lincoln” — probably
did not commit blasphemy by administering communion to a dog. My point here
is, you can’t blame everything on Twitter.

But about the Postal Service’s new line of clothing.

“The agreement will put the Postal Service on the cutting edge of
functional fashion,” a spokesman said in a press release announcing the
birth of the “Rain Heat & Snow” brand of apparel and accessories.

The good news is that this is a *way* better plan than the U.S. Postal
Service Pro Cycling Team, which you will remember was an investment of an
estimated $40 million in the theory that the American people would like
their postal system a whole lot more if they associated it with Lance
Armstrong.

This time, the service says it’s not putting up any cash at all. It’s just
licensing its “unofficial motto” to a Cleveland apparel company in return
for a little slice of any profits that will occur if it turns out that
consumers have been harboring a secret yen for fashions that will make them
look as if they were delivering the mail.

The motto, by the way, is: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of
night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed
rounds.” It comes from a translation of something by Herodotus, who is not
getting a commission.

If “Rain Heat & Snow” doesn’t work, perhaps the folks in Cleveland would be
interested in a “Never on Saturday” line of leisure wear.

The Postal Service is in a tough place. A while back, Congress turned it
into a semiprivate entity, which was supposed to operate just like a
profit-making organization except for the part where it had to continue to
fulfill all the wishes, hopes and whims of Congress.

When you’re strapped for cash, dignity is the first thing to go. Just ask
the members of the minor league baseball team in Corpus Christi, Tex., who
play their games at Whataburger Field.

Auctioning off your motto is nothing, really. We have lived with the sale
of naming rights so long that generations of Americans have grown up taking
it for granted that it is a fine thing to see your college team end a
season by winning the Beef ‘O’Brady’s Bowl. Remember when Houston was stuck
with Enron Field in 2001? Embarrassing for a second, but then the city
resold the rights to Minute Maid for $170 million. Naming rights: good.
Renaming rights: better.

This week Florida Atlantic University announced plans to christen its
football stadium in honor of GEO Group, a private prison corporation. “It’s
like calling something Blackwater Stadium,” a critic told Greg Bishop of
The Times. Meanwhile, the folks at the University of Louisville are
cheering for their basketball teams in the KFC Yum! Center.

Yum! is the parent company of fast-food chains like Taco Bell, Pizza Hut
and KFC. It forked over $13.5 million to imprint the stadium for the next
decade. Sandra Kendall, the marketing manager for the center, said the
exclamation point was “part of the deal.” The folks in Louisville, she
said, do not find this disturbing.

Perhaps if the Postal Service agreed to become the Postal (Yum!) Service,
the KFC people would be willing to pay off part of its pension obligations.
This has not happened, people! But feel free to spread the rumor.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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