Jamie L.H. Goodall, a staff historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, published her Washington Post op-ed on Friday ahead of Super Bowl LV, in which the Buccaneers faced off against the Kansas City Chiefs for the NFL championship.
‘While this celebration of piracy seems like innocent fun and pride in a local culture, there is danger in romanticizing ruthless cutthroats who created a crisis in world trade when they captured and plundered thousands of ships on Atlantic trade routes,’ Goodall wrote.
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Her stupidity is troubling on several levels. One is that she is an “historian”, which makes her lack of knowledge of history make me question her credentials. The other is an apparent propensity to virtue signal over perhaps first checking facts. One only has to google the word “buccaneer” to discover they are not pirates.
That's the first thing I thought as well when I read her alleged bona fides.
Buccaneers were, for at least part of their history, privateers, meaning their predation was conducted with the sanction, warrant and blessing of their government. So if there is anything, "problematic," about their name, that would be it.
Actually my 1960 Webster's dictionary defines a buccaneer as a pirate.