the thing is, is
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Of Reds and Men
After decades of discomfort over the Redmen mascot in Utah that “honored” the native people whose land was taken away by white Mormon settlers, the powers that bee (hive) decided this year that the best replacement was…
…wait for the bold creativity and imagination…
The Reds.
You got it — the new Cedar High School mascot isn’t a beautifully badass sidewinder, or a majestic buck ready for the shooting, or a completely incorrect description of the color of Paiute skin.
Not even a Mountain Meadow!
No, it’s a primary color. Cue the Price Is Right loser horns.
What a missed opportunity. But one anyone could have seen coming.
I should have seen it too: my emails to the Iron County School District about the offensiveness of the Redmen name were met with alerts that there were “problems” delivering it, and that it had ultimately “failed” to send. Writing on the wall.
(Thankfully, the fullness-of-times miracle of the Internet allows anyone to read that letter here.)
I’m also sad that my petition to change the new mascot to the CHS White Folks failed — barely a trickle of support. Of course, I didn’t invite any Left-Coast weirdos to weigh in, so that could have been a big part of the problem.
And so ultimately, the ahem, bold visionaries in Cedar City took the most expected, most entrenched route in addressing this terrible, outsider plot against such a belovedly tone-deaf mascot.
They decided to cling to none other than the most racist half the original name.
Call it a lack of imagination (or maybe the LDS General Conference was going on that week), but I think the Cedar City old guard could have tried harder.
Cedar City decided to cling to the most racist half of the original mascot name.
The “if you don’t like our peaches” blowhards could have gone way more scorched-earth-fuck-you to their critics. After all, there are umpteen more “down-with-progress” kinds of mascot options out there.
The most obvious of which is plain to see:
Men.
Come on, CHS, it was right in front of you. You chose Red when you could have chosen FUCKING MEN. A rinky-dink primary color over the best, the most manly, the most middle-finger part of your existing mascot?
Imagine a Chuck Norris-like muscle man in a four-by-four with a chainsaw in one hand and a hunting rifle in another, wearing a huge golden-plates belt buckle, and bingo — the coolest mascot in Utah and beyond would be a reality today.
I could have come up with that mascot easily, in fact I just did. But way back in January when I personally emailed Iron School District Superintendent Shannon Dulaney with a very professional and heartfelt email offering my advertising agency’s services in helping transition CHS from Redmen to something more befitting... no response.
That pesky Internet again. Never works when you need it to!
Anyway. Since Cedar City peeps obviously have a hankering to keep things oooooold school, let me point out maybe the best part of choosing Men as your mascot:
You could have started calling the female CHS athletes the Lady Men. (I dont recommend Googling that, by the by.) But wow, what a stake in the ground.
But in choosing a basic hue — something on a fey, free-thinking, thoughtful artist’s paintbrush — Cedar City decided to call itself boys, not men.
I think it’s time for another vote.
Cedar City decided to call itself boys, not men.
Cedar High alumni (because we all know the students want to be rid of the Redmen label), do you really, double-triple-really want to fight for your heritage? Men are more endangered than racist native American mascots these days. I say you show your true colors — not red, but something even more offensive to the progressive leftists threatening your oh-so-beset way of life:
Unabashed, toxic, nutjob manliness.
What’s it going to be? The CHS Men is just one idea. I’ve got others.
So meet me in the Men’s Room, the one underneath the CHS auditorium that’s usually locked but sometimes open because who knows why, and let’s get this plan going.
(Because apparently my emails aren’t worth responding to.)
Oh, and congratulations on the new water tower paint job. Impressive, but it still could be about a thousand percent more manly. And offensive.