Did Bruce Levenson buy a stake in the Orem Owlz minor-league baseball team while no one was paying attention?
In the most misguided marketing plan since Levenson infamously suggested ideas to keep black customers away from Hawks games, the Owlz had planned a "Caucasian Heritage Night" for Aug. 10. Shockingly, this didn't go over well with lots of people and so the team, a rookie-league affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels, cancelled the promotion after the backlash.
The team's PR guy, Joey Zanaboni, resigned after just a couple of weeks on the job but not because this was his idea. Over the weekend Zanaboni posted a statement on Twitter in which he said he told his bosses that Caucasian Heritage Night wasn't going to go over well.
“After learning of the promotion during my first week, I raised serious concerns about it with multiple members of the front office, both verbally and via email,” Zanaboni wrote. “I registered my disagreement with carrying out such a promotion. I also warned that this event - no matter the intention of it - would cause public backlash. My concerns were not taken seriously, and my advice went unheeded.”
Caucasian Heritage Night isn’t what it sounds like. The team said it was to include “Wonder Bread on burgers with mayonnaise, clips from shows like 'Friends' and 'Seinfeld' and trying to solve the vertical leaping challenge.” Get it?
Some might think this is funny in (bad) jokes among friends, as part of a (hackneyed) stand-up routine or for an episode of a (broad) sitcom. It is not funny as part of a minor-league baseball promotion at any time, especially not one announced a couple of days after an apparent white supremacist shot and killed nine black people in South Carolina.
As for the predictable pushback from people who believe criticism of Caucasian Heritage Night is a racist double standard, there are lots of places on the Web where you can go to commiserate with other members of the “embattled White minority.”
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