Taking it to the sports world

 

I love basketball and my favorite team has always been the Washington Wizards (formerly the Baltimore Bullets). I was born in Maryland.

The corporate takeover of pro sports has made it harder and harder to stay a fan but I've made a pact with myself to do what I can to bring my political work into my fandom.

I frequently visit a Wizards fan site called Bullets Forever and they regularly have a 'Fan mailbag' feature where you can send in questions and the guys that run the site answer them. I've taken to doing that and just this past week I had two of my questions featured.

One was about the logo and slogan the team used this past season: DC Above All. When I first saw it Hitler's Deutschland über alles came to mind so I wrote a comment (doubting they'd print it) but much to my surprise it appeared in their June mailbag. Here is my question along with the answer which actually impressed me.

 

• Will the Wizards get rid of their ‘DC Above All’ slogan which is eerily similar to WWII Germany’s ‘Deutschland über alles’? Have the Wizards become a PR arm of the State Department? (Bruce Gagnon)

Albert: I reached out to the corresponding people at Monumental Sports & Entertainment [corporate owners of the Wizards] regarding your question specifically but have not received a response in time.

From past seasons when teams decide to change their slogans, they do so before the start of a new regular season. So I assume that is what the Wizards will do as well.

For those of you not familiar with what Bruce is referring to in regard to “Deutschland über alles,” it literally means “Germany above all else.” It is part of the stanza from their national anthem as originally written, and it was regularly sung during the Nazi era and is associated as such. Germans today often avoid singing that verse due to the perception it has with Nazism and don’t appreciate hearing it, even when sung by accident by foreigners. Wikipedia has a better way of explaining this than I can so I’ll refer you there. I did read some criticism on the “DC Above All” slogan for that reason specifically as well.