NCAA FootballSports & Politics

Even Glenn Beck Trashed Kansas State’s New Environmentally-Friendly Mascot

A few days ago, college football fans across the land lined up to take shots at EcoKat, a new mascot devised by Kansas State to help promote an environmentally conscious message. Well, it turned out so many people lined up to take shots that the school has drastically reduced EcoKat’s eeb presence. The URL that once led to her site redirects here, while school officials say that though she was misunderstood (“She is not an athletic mascot”), the school will hold back on promoting EcoKat for the time being. And in a bizarre turn, one of her many detractors was…right-wing icon/honor-restorer/apparent expert on the black American experience Glenn Beck:

Beck’s first problem with the mascot is the same problem everyone else had (though, again, had it been clearer EcoKat wasn’t intended to be an athletics mascot, this might not have been as big of an issue): it just seemed like a cheesy idea. Additionally, the linked post from Beck’s site calls it “annoying to have political messages spread around sports” – while this can be true, it seems to us that people who say they don’t like when sports get mixed up with politics are really saying they don’t like when sports get mixed up with politics they don’t agree with…but we digress.

The biggest bone Beck & Co. had to pick with Kansas State, though, was this: they couldn’t help but notice an eerie similarity between the logo associated with the EcoKat initiative and the one used by Beck for his plan to improve America through the four Es – enlightenment, education, empowerment, and entrepreneurship. Here’s the page on education. Below, you can see the logos side-by-side:

CLEARLY unrelated. the “2″s are placed differently! (Actually, um, wow.)