Last night, The Daily Show aired the segment about the Redskins that James Joyner earlier this week. It’s pretty standard fare for a Jason Jones piece, but they didn’t actually end up airing very much footage from the “confrontation” between the Redskins fans and the group of Native American Indians Jones had interviewed:
“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” aired its controversial segment Thursday night pitting Washington Redskins fans against Native Americans over the team’s name.
But the program showed hardly any of the heated footage of the taped confrontation between the two sides, with Stewart opening the segment alluding to public complaints from Redskins fans about being misled by the show, and preparing viewers to expect an edited version of the piece.
“We learned later that some of the individuals who participated in the piece, they didn’t enjoy the experience. It’s something that happens a lot less than you would think,” Stewart said in an unusual, apologetic preamble to a segment featuring correspondent Jason Jones. “But we take the complaint seriously. We generally don’t want people who participate in the show to have a bad experience. We work very hard to find real people who have real beliefs and want to express those beliefs on television, and we work hard to make sure that the gist of those beliefs are represented accurately, albeit sometimes comedically on our program.
“If we find out that someone in a piece was intentionally misled or if their comments were intentionally misrepresented, we do not air that piece. We would not air that piece. So that being said, I hope you enjoy the following piece.”
(…)
The Redskins fans were Kelli O’Dell, a former teacher who lives in Alexandria and writes about the team for an NFL fan site; Maurice Hawkins, 43, a sales consultant from Hampton Roads, Va.; Brian Dortch, who runs a home-repair business in Dinwiddie, Va.; and Charles Barr, 36, an office adminstrator for a heating and air conditioning company in Petersburg, Va., who also runs a Redskins blog. Barr sported a giant Redskins belt that looks like the kind worn by professional wrestlers.
The Native Americans who confronted the fans featured a mix of activists and comedians, including Amanda Blackhorse, the lead plaintiff in the case that has put the Redskins’ trademark protections in jeopardy; Bobby Wilson, 29, of Phoenix, a member of the comedy group The 1491s; and Tara Houska, an Ojibwe from Couchiching First Nation who lives in the District and works for the grass-roots group Eradicating Offensive Native Mascotry.
Judge for yourself:
