Stupid is as stupid does. And this was definitely stupid.
It doesn't surprise me that people, including people who work for Nike, don't know about Ireland's history. However, it does surprise me that people, especially those who work for Nike, don't know how to use a search engine.
The international shoe giant eventually apologized for naming, albeit unofficially, a shoe after a ruthless bunch of thugs who brutally slaughtered the Irish civilians in the name of the Crown — the Black and Tans. The group was a paramilitary force sent by England in 1919 to squash any uprising of the Irish Republican Army.
Instead, the Black and Tans widely raped and pillaged any and all Irish men, women and children who crossed their paths.
The name came from their black tunics and tan army pants.
Since then, the Irish memorialized the Black and Tans with a drink. It is half British ale (usually Bass) and half Guinness. (For the record, if it's made with Guinness and Harp, it's called a half and half.)
Nike thought they were naming the shoes after a beverage. Nobody thought to ask where the name of the drink came from. That is just plain stupid. We're not talking about a small town church festival that made an error. Nike is big time. They should have caught it.
Some reports quote Ciaran Staunton, the president of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, as saying that naming the shoe the Black and Tan is the Irish equivelent of calling it the al-Qaida. That's about right. I'll add, it's like naming it the Pearl Harbor Bomber.
I can certainly understand an honest mistake. However, Nike is an international company. Learning sensitivities about other countries and other cultures is part of their daily ops. To me, this is like a NASA spacecraft that couldn't land because it did not convert metric to English. This is not rocket science. Well, in that case, apparently it would be.
Still, our society is getting stupider and stupider. This is another example. We cannot possibly memorize everything. We cannot truly learn by rote. We need to teach our children to go a layer deeper, to ask another question, to find out more.
No, no, Nike. You flunked the history test. Perhaps you'll do better in spelling. Perhaps, instead, you should teach your employees to memorize the word "Google."
It varies from complete fabrications (her statement that, without the testimony of Sandra Fluke the congressional committee had no testimony from women) to those easy to verify with Google ( the Black and Tans didn't arrive in Ireland until March 1920 (not 1919 as she mentioned). Some things are easy for her to FABRICATE because ... or course ... it must have happened. Erin just said the Black and Tans "widely raped and pillaged any and all Irish men, women and children who crossed their paths". In over 600 pages of academic writing on the war the word rape (or any similar word) was never used. It was suggested in one doctoral thesis that the limit of sexual assault was likely that both men and women were sometimes paraded through town naked. That the lack of documentation indicated that other sexual assaults were few. "any and all" ... hardly. The IRA and the Black and Tans regularly exchanges reprisals .. and reprisals to the reprisals ... but most attacks by either side were targeted (even if for the flimsiest of reasons). Cleanup the factual problems and Erin could become more believable.
There is quite a pattern of inconsistency here.
Erin is gay. Now, Are you going to focus on the obscure word like the article, and take it as meaning 'happy, or gleeful'? Or are you going to focus on the contemporary word, meaning homosexual?
The whole thing probably wouldnt even have been noticed if it hadnt been so close to Paddy's day.
http://www.celebrityclap.com/nfl-william-gay-team-color-kids-authentic-jerseys-pittsburgh-steelers-22-black-football-jerseys-from-reebok-s-xxl.html Other than the fact that this has nothing to do with the NFL, the point still stands that both you and Erin work at a company that has an alternative meaning of "idiot, clown, or dolt" More to the point, the word 'obscure' mean relatively unknown. Not that the person using that word isn't aware of it. The key word is relative, as in which term is more widely known relative to the other; paramilitary unit that existed almost 100 years ago, or a mixed drink that is in common contemporary usage? In fact to use the word obscure, I would not only have to know both usages, but more specifically which one is in more common usage. Without knowing that, I would not have been able to even use the word obscure. I would have used the word unknown. You can call it pedantic, but I call it being very specific with the word I choose to use, because I take the time to think about what I write.
You will notice that madonna didn't change her name. Madonna, in your sense, is only a definition among Roman Catholics(madonna is the roman translation for 'Our Lady'), and then even only since the reformation a few hundred years ago. Since you are obviously Roman Catholic, you must therefore think everyone calls her this. Protestants do not call her this, nor do the millions of people in dozens of other branches of christianity. So yes, it is a relatively obscure name outside of your own mind. The point here is that what you consider well-known, is not what the rest of the world considers well known. Nothing you can say is going to change the perceptions of the millions of other people that don't share you views of popularity of a term. Next time, look up definitions of words before you try to use them the wrong way. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Madonna
If those statements are incorrect then, indeed, her indiscretions and distortions in what would normally be the factual part of her opinion argument are understandable and I'll just consider her opinions with that in mind.
The point certain people are trying to make here is that as a journalist you should always report what you can verify and make sure you specify clearly that if you cannot verify something that you feel is key to the story, state that it is unverifiable at the time of the writing.
If I'm a volunteer, writing for the Patch and I say the Holocaust never happen or Trayvon Martin, the teen that was shot in self defense by the George Zimmerman, was his own worst enemy, does that make it right. Why? Cause I'm a volunteer and it's my opinion. If Erin would have labeled this clearly as MY OPINION, then this would have died quickly. She wrote it as an article, from a journalist, with poor research and then proceeds to bad mouth supporters of the patch, simply because they are the audience, and thinks that's ok.