The people of Cleveland are huge sports fans. The sports section of the daily paper The Plain Dealer is easily the largest section, not to mention the extra sports supplements that it puts out regularly. Like other newspapers around the nation, the paper has been cutting back on beat reporters and news coverage, except for sports.

I follow American professional sports only cursorily. They are such a huge money sucking enterprise that benefits mostly the wealthy owners of teams that I cannot work up any enthusiasm for them. In addition the suspicions of cheating in many forms (such as doping) has added to my disillusionment. Today’s release of the shocking report on the massive and widespread doping that pervades professional cycling just added to the sense that it is all rather sordid.

But I do feel sorry for the dispirited sports fans in the city who have been longing for a championship for so long that I hope for their sake that either the Cavaliers basketball team or the Browns football team wins a championship soon and shakes this rather nice city out of its loser mentality.

But I hate the baseball team the Indians because of their disgusting logo. This year they got off to a good start, leading their division until they collapsed spectacularly in the second half of the season and ended up just barely out of last place. It would not bother me in the least if they continue to crash and burn every year as long as they proudly keep that logo.

Stephen Colbert pokes fun at George Will’s silly reasoning about race and in the process attacks the Indians logo.

(This clip appeared on October 3, 2012. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)

Of course, disparaging the Indians logo immediately arouses great anger in those who, for some weird reason, strongly identify with their sports teams and see an attack on the logo as a direct assault on them.