‘New York Post’ Jacoby Ellsbury Headline Offensive

The back page headline on the Saturday, December 14, 2013, edition of the New York Post, concerning newly signed New York Yankees centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury was very offensive. Soon as I saw the photo of Ellsbury shaking hands with Yankees’ skipper Joe Girardi with the words “Bury the Hatchet” blasting across the page, I felt great disdain for the newspaper and its pathetic attempt at humor.

I have loathed the New York Post for a long time, dating back to the despicable front page photograph of John Lennon’s body in the morgue after his murder. Ever since then I have held the newspaper in contempt, thinking it lacked any journalistic integrity that subsequent photographs and headlines (just like this one) only continue to confirm.

So what is my big problem with this headline? Jacoby Ellsbury identifies as Native American – his mother is Navajo. He is the first Major League Baseball player of Navajo descent and only one of three active Native American players (Joba Chamberlain and Kyle Lohse) in MLB. I know first hand from family members who live in Oregon, have met Ellsbury, and watched his rise to stardom that there is great pride in his accomplishments in the Native American community.

This headline is a crude attempt at some warped sense of humor that does nothing but prove beyond a shadow of the doubt that the New York Post is nothing more than a glorified toilet paper. It’s obvious that most of the general public realizes that journalistic integrity is a foreign concept for this paper, a glaring version of the worst humanity has to offer in print.

During the introduction to the media on Friday, Girardi spoke of how happy he was that Ellsbury was now on his team. “You are no longer a thorn in my side.” The only surprising thing is that the Post didn’t depict Ellsbury in stereotypical costume and change the quotation to read “arrow in my side.” You could say, “No one would stoop that low.” Of course, then you wouldn’t know the New York Post.

I believe the newspaper and its chairman Rupert Murdoch owe Ellsbury and the Native American community a sincere and public apology. Judging from the fact that Yoko Ono is still waiting for one, we shouldn’t expect that any time soon. This is just modus operandi for this ongoing excuse for a daily newspaper and the refuse it continues to publish.

Please confine yourselves to picking up copies of the Post from the city’s trash bins and only use it for your bird cages, doggie crates, and on the floor to catch paint drippings. Sadly, even those uses are too good a fate for this disgrace to journalism.

Photo credit: native appropriations.com