Kings apologize for selling Turkish-made scarves on Armenian Night

[ijuka]

Who cares about these heritage nights anyway? Everyone knows it's just virtue signaling, and everyone also knows the purpose is not to honor anyone, but to pad the league's public image. If they believed that these heritage nights wouldn't benefit their public image, they would stop doing it. They don't actually care, which means that, if it was me, I'd rather they don't do it in the first place.

I'm guessing whatever entry level employee ordered these is not a history scholar / someone who knows much of a thing outside their bubble.

Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be a history scholar to google it, or even ask ChatGPT.

Can't help but always shake my head at comments like these. As if you need to spend years in school to develop a working brain.

 

[OilersFanatics505]

I think people are generally unaware of the history between Turkey and the Armenians… I wouldn’t be aware of it wasn’t for an Armenian coworker who’s family escaped genocide.

Who cares about these heritage nights anyway? Everyone knows it's just virtue signaling, and everyone also knows the purpose is not to honor anyone, but to pad the league's public image. If they believed that these heritage nights wouldn't benefit their public image, they would stop doing it. They don't actually care, which means that, if it was me, I'd rather they don't do it in the first place.


Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be a history scholar to google it, or even ask ChatGPT.

Can't help but always shake my head at comments like these. As if you need to spend years in school to develop a working brain.

I think that’s the point… the general person wouldn’t think of the need to make sure of that…

 

[Rodgerwilco]

That's a huge f*** up, but at least they acknowledged it

They acknowledged it because they got busted............... If no one mentioned it they wouldn't have ever acknowledged this.

 

[CatOTails]

Were these like some-sort of specially made scarves for the "Armenian Heritage Night" or generic Kings merchandise? If we're talking about regular merchandise I don't really get what's all the fuzz is about.
Even if these were specially made unique scarves for a specific event one must understand that merchandise is ordered in bulk from the approved list of suppliers and these orders include merchandise for various events: armenian, black, rainbow, whatever night you can come up with. Do people really expect purchase manager or whoever was responsible had to consider events that took place 100 years ago?
Can't say about everyone but I know a lot of Jewish people driving around in Volkswagens and BMW's.

Each day people find more and more ways to get offended.

 

[OilersFanatics505]

They acknowledged it because they got busted............... If no one mentioned it they wouldn't have ever acknowledged this.

Of course they wouldn’t have acknowledged it because they weren’t aware of it until it’s brought up… it’s not rocket science…

 

[Oddbob]

we can not get political on this but if you do not know why this is bad... google Arminian history between 1915 to 1917. But if you know and do not care? That is whole other conversation

When you need people to tell you why it is an issue, than it must not be that great of an issue. I'm old enough, heard of lots of overseas troubles/issues, and never heard of this.

 

[Bear of Bad News]

When you need people to tell you why it is an issue, than it must not be that great of an issue. I'm old enough, heard of lots of overseas troubles/issues, and never heard of this.

You don't specifically need to think that it's a big issue.

The important thing is that to Armenians, it's absolutely a big issue. Hence the apology.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

Of course they wouldn’t have acknowledged it because they weren’t aware of it until it’s brought up… it’s not rocket science…

I have a hard time believing that not a single person within the organization involved in this promotion noticed that the stuff was made in Turkey until the stuff was already distributed and then they were called out by fans.

 

[57special]

When you need people to tell you why it is an issue, than it must not be that great of an issue. I'm old enough, heard of lots of overseas troubles/issues, and never heard of this.

Imagine that 1/2 to 2/3rds of your family and extended family were raped or otherwise brutalized(including children), before being shot, buried alive, ridden down, stoned, or otherwise murdered. Then imagine the same thing happening to everyone else who lives in your area.

Then imagine someone saying to you, years later, that it "wasn't a big issue".

 

[OilersFanatics505]

I have a hard time believing that not a single person within the organization involved in this promotion noticed that the stuff was made in Turkey until the stuff was already distributed and then they were called out by fans.

How often do you know where your clothes are made in?

 

[Rodgerwilco]

How often do you know where your clothes are made in?

Fallacious comparison.... If I was professionally employed to facilitate this kind of thing for a promotion that was going out to 10s of thousands of people I would certainly pay much more attention to this...

 

[OilersFanatics505]

Fallacious comparison.... If I was professionally employed to facilitate this kind of thing for a promotion that was going out to 10s of thousands of people I would certainly pay much more attention to this...

Not if it’s something you don’t regularly have to think about… we’re not talking offering Chick Fil A gift cards on pride night level of knowledge here.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

Not just the government, 90% of Turks deny the genocide occurred.

And most governments of other countries did not recognize the genocide until the last 5 or 10 years, including the United States.

The U.S. Senate unanimously recognized the genocide in 2019 but the resolution was not supported by the president at the time. Then in 2021 the new president officially recognized the genocide.

So while the genocide occurred during the first World War, it has been a long long fight for it to be recognized around the world and that recognition only happened recently. So it is still very much in the minds of the Armenian community.

As for the Kings, people outside of southern California may not realize that Los Angeles has the largest population of Armenians outside of Armenia.

 

[Oddbob]

Imagine that 1/2 to 2/3rds of your family and extended family were raped or otherwise brutalized(including children), before being shot, buried alive, ridden down, stoned, or otherwise murdered. Then imagine the same thing happening to everyone else who lives in your area.

Then imagine someone saying to you, years later, that it "wasn't a big issue".

You are acting like an insensitive, ignorant jerk.

Calm down! I was more pointing out, that most people likely have never heard of this as I haven't, and if some young Kings person ordered this stuff, they definitely wouldn't know. Far greater issues in the World today than something like this.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

Calm down! I was more pointing out, that most people likely have never heard of this as I haven't, and if some young Kings person ordered this stuff, they definitely wouldn't know. Far greater issues in the World today than something like this.

If that young Kings fan was Armenian, they 100% knew about it. As I stated earlier, Los Angeles is home to the largest Armenian population outside of Armenia.

And you not hearing about it is exactly the point. For decades the genocide in Armenia has been erased and the Armenian people have been struggling to get their story told and the genocide recognized, which has only happened for a lot of countries in the last 5 to 10 years. So it's a very recent and still sensitive issue.

The Los Angeles Kings unintentionally offended a portion of their fan base and local community, so they apologized for it.

 

[Machinehead]

The way I always looked it, if you f***ed up, you apologize, and then you shake hands and move on. You don't soapbox about the other person being "offended." I don't get that.

It was bad what happened. At the same time, I can understand that not everyone knew about it, and certainly the person delegated to secure the merchandise may have overlooked it. And they owned it.

I'm not here to drag the Kings or call for anyone to be fired. It should just be "hey, I wasn't aware, my bad" and that's the end of it.

Nobody should be mad that the Kings apologized because they see it as not a big deal.

The only people who seem offended are the ones who keep bringing up that talking point for some reason.

 

[Rodgerwilco]

Not if it’s something you don’t regularly have to think about… we’re not talking offering Chick Fil A gift cards on pride night level of knowledge here.

I think if you're in charge of this kind of thing then it needs to be something you regularly think about, and I find it hard to think that even one person on the chain here didn't know about this.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

Not if it’s something you don’t regularly have to think about… we’re not talking offering Chick Fil A gift cards on pride night level of knowledge here.

If you live in LA, that's actually an apt comparison.

 

[OilersFanatics505]

I think if you're in charge of this kind of thing then it needs to be something you regularly think about, and I find it hard to think that even one person on the chain here didn't know about this.

Ok we get it, you want the head of whoever’s responsible to be fired and immediately shamed. They apologized…

 

[Summer Rose]

The Kings messed up and apologized. Good on them for doing so.

Also, just because something happened over 100 years ago doesn't automatically mean it isn't relevant to people today. You don't get to decide what's important to someone else. They do. It's still a very, very big deal to Armenian people as a whole.

 

[chris kontos]

Exactly this.

I don’t imagine many - if any - of the posters who are complaining about this had any knowledge of the history of Armenian-Turkish conflict prior to reading this thread. Very likely the same as the low level LA Kings employee who made the purchasing decision.

But finding things to be indignant about recently pulled ahead of baseball as America’s #1 pastime…..

thanks for rolling in the gutter with the rest of us, professor

 

[chris kontos]

The way I always looked it, if you f***ed up, you apologize, and then you shake hands and move on. You don't soapbox about the other person being "offended." I don't get that.

It was bad what happened. At the same time, I can understand that not everyone knew about it, and certainly the person delegated to secure the merchandise may have overlooked it. And they owned it.

I'm not here to drag the Kings or call for anyone to be fired. It should just be "hey, I wasn't aware, my bad" and that's the end of it.

Nobody should be mad that the Kings apologized because they see it as not a big deal.

The only people who seem offended are the ones who keep bringing up that talking point for some reason.

for me its not only about the genocide and continuing persecution of armenian people, but the consistent overall incompetence of the kings present management organization. which took a championship group and ran it into the ground making incredibly stupid decisions, deals and hires. only to insure a retirement gig for thier ex teamates and cronys. they are a confederacy of dunces.

 

[Voight]

Who cares about these heritage nights anyway? Everyone knows it's just virtue signaling, and everyone also knows the purpose is not to honor anyone, but to pad the league's public image. If they believed that these heritage nights wouldn't benefit their public image, they would stop doing it. They don't actually care, which means that, if it was me, I'd rather they don't do it in the first place.


Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be a history scholar to google it, or even ask ChatGPT.

Can't help but always shake my head at comments like these. As if you need to spend years in school to develop a working brain.

How exactly would they know to do that tho? Like there's no real reason or a random person to google stuff like that.

I enjoy reading about world history so thats how I learned about it many years ago. Someone who isn't interested in history isn't going to be aware of it nor be reading about it.

 

[Lt Dan]

Were these like some-sort of specially made scarves for the "Armenian Heritage Night" or generic Kings merchandise?

It was the first

 

[Mattb124]

You don't think anyone here had any knowledge of the Armenian genocide before coming to read or post in this thread? That's a wild claim, and it shows you have a pretty low opinion of the intelligence of your fellow posters on this site. If you didn't know about it, that's fine. Use the opportunity to do some reading and educate yourself. But don't put that on everyone else.

This is such an easy thing to not f*** up but this organization simply refuses to stop taking L's at every turn.

Way to go, captain reading comprehension. “I don’t think many….”

I think you and a number of other posters lack an appreciation for how easily something like this could happen - even with the best intentions. As suggested previously, the Kings probably didn’t have “strong knowledge of obscure early 20th skirmishes in Western Asia” in the job description.