Controversy in Colstrip, MT

The Senior Class at Colstrip High School in southeast Montana wants to take a trip and being enterprising young folks, they held a fundraiser.  The students packed the school gymnasium for a Donkey Basketball game.  For the uniniated, an animal trainer brings in a truckload of donkeys wearing special rubber shoes to prevent damage to the hardwood.  Players are issued scoop shovels to take care of any "accidents" and they mount up to play an interesting game of hoops.

Most people in Montana have no problem with this sort of entertainment, save for a few PETA types.  However, one of the teams in Colstrip managed to stir up a rather nasty hornet's nest.  The team took the floor with the name "Retard Rodeo" according to a letter to the editor in the Billings Gazette.

Throughout the game, the announcer used the team name, offending at least one person in the stands.  And I will have to take the side of that person as I find the name to be offensive as well.  

Anyone who knows me, knows I'm not exactly "Politically Correct", but I like to think I draw the line at ridiculing a group of people who don't deserve ridicule.  It's one thing to make fun of politicians or yourself, but the person who named the team crossed the line in my book.

In reading the comments posted online after the letter, it was revealed by a parent of one of the team members that the name was decided on at the last minute by one team member, who didn't have the support of the rest of the team.  That student then told the team name to the announcer who went ahead and used it.

I can buy that explanation, and the mother says her daughter has already written a letter of apology.  I say good for the daughter and good for the mother involved there. 

But that still leaves the questions of what should be done with the person who came up with the name and where did the announcer leave his brain that night?  It's not like we didn't have a recent example of something very similar to this blowing up in the press.  President Obama took his lumps and moved on.  The people involved in Colstrip should be taught a lesson too.  I'm not talking anything drastic like drawing & quartering or staking them to an anthill on the prairie drenched in honey.  But seeing as how the name was offensive to those who participate in Special Olympics, why not make those involved in this whole mess spend the day as volunteers at a Special Olympics track meet?

The timing is right, they're being held around the state of Montana right now.  I'm sure they wouldn't have to travel far to find one.  And I think a day with these special people would go a long way to educating our clueless friends as to why they were wrong to use the name "Retard Rodeo".