The progressive left has decided to demonstrate that they have their finger on the pulse of public opinion by elevating their crusade against what they deem to be offensively named athletic teams to prominence.

The vast majority of those team names deemed offensive are those which pay homage to or reference Native Americans. The most conspicuous example of this crusade is the effort to force the Washington Redskins to abandon their name.

The campaign has not lit the nation’s hair on fire as it has for the left. That might have to do with the fact that most of those who are demanding a variety of teams change their names are not sports fans and do not consume the product which they contend must change.

A July 20 – 21 Vox Populi poll found, for example, that 65 percent of NFL fans and 77 percent of Redskins fans reject the calls for team owner Dan Snyder to give up the legacy name. Another 71 percent of NFL fans and 83 percent of Redskins fans said they did not even find the name offensive. These results have been consistent across a number of polls on the issue.

That is a problem for the activist left, a movement which is deeply troubled by the fact that you don’t share in their humorless torment.

To address the fact that you are not appropriately offended by the variety of Native American-themed sports teams, progressives decided that they can change hearts and minds if they showed you just how awful it was for your ethnic group to be celebrated by a professional sports franchise.

This is the result:

The grinning “Caucasians” logo on the T-shirt by Cleveland, Ohio-based Shelf Life Clothing Co. has become a hot item recently at Ontario First Nations reserves in Canada, according to a report by the Toronto Star.

The image, a distortion of the Cleveland Indians’ mascot “Chief Wahoo,” suggests that people of European dissent either care excessively for or are apt at making money. That’s about all that can be construed as provocative, and that’s not offensive in the least.

“Regardless of where you stand on the issue, this, from the standpoint of the Native American, serves to take ownership of the issue and reverse the direction of it,” wrote CBS Sports reporter Dan Perry. “In that sense, it’s effective.”

Effective at what? Demonstrating how inoffensive the original Indians logo is? If this is the equivalent for people of European background, all it demonstrates is that some people are far too sensitive and are unduly consumed with the affairs of others.

In that sense, it most certainly is effective.