'Daily Show' put Native Americans and Redskins fans face-to-face, awkwardness ensued
Thursday night proved a very bad time to be a fan of Washington's football team.
On CBS, the team got completely dismantled by the New York Giants, 45-14, in a game where quarterback Kirk Cousins played catch with the Giants' secondary (four interceptions).
On Comedy Central (video above), you can see what happened during a "Daily Show" segment titled "Catching Racism," where correspondent Jason Jones spoke with Native Americans and then fans of the Washington team, and then both of them together. Prior to the taping, the fans did not know that such a meeting would occur.
The exchange apparently left one of the fans in tears. Per the Washington Post.:
“This goes way beyond mocking. Poking fun is one thing, but that’s not what happened,” said Kelli O’Dell, 56, a former teacher from Alexandria, Va. who participated on the show. “It was disingenuous. The Native Americans accused me of things that were so wrong. I felt in danger. I didn’t consent to that. I am going to be defamed.”
The contingent of the American Indians knew that they would eventually meet the group of fans. Here's how one of them, Bobby Wilson, described his knowledge of how it would go down:
“[Show producers] essentially explained days in advance that the fans are going to be in there, and they’re just going to be essentially justifying the use of the word Redskins and the use of racial imagery, and they’re going to say a lot of things they would most likely not say in front of American Indians -- and that we were going to go in there and see if they’d actually say all of that in front of us. That was definitely something we could get on board with. It didn’t seem strange or unfair on our end, considering that each of us has always been confronting racism on this level.”
Among other things -- and this portion did not make it to air -- one of the Native Americans said he told O'Dell and the three other fans, "You sound like an alcoholic, someone who's in denial and who doesn’t want to believe what they’re doing is not right."
O'Dell said she left in tears, shaking, and later called police because she felt threatened.
The Washington Post article goes into greater detail about the meeting.
Before airing the segment, Stewart told viewers that his program doesn't broadcast pieces if a subject has been intentionally misled or their comments misrepresented.
"We generally don't want people to participate in the show to have a bad experience," Stewart said. "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."
Earlier this week, "South Park" skewered the team and especially owner Dan Snyder, who has persistently claimed that the team's name and mascot actually honors Native Americans.
Before Washington's meeting with Jacksonville last Sunday, the Native Americans went to FedEx Field, where some fans reportedly yelled at them, "Thanks a lot for letting us use your name, boys!"
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
