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VERMONT CAVES
A Vermont school is changing the names of its sports teams:
Champlain Valley Union High School just graduated its last Crusaders, with the School Board set to pick a new name for the school’s teams by fall ...
Some argue that the name Crusaders is an important school tradition. Others see it as a symbol of religious oppression.
Via LGF. So, which name should replace “Crusaders”? Some suggestions:
a) Girly Punk Kids
b) Howard Deans
c) Surrenderers
d) The Whipped
e) Li’l Fiskies
f) NYT Staffers
g) Michael Moore’s Minutemen
h) Plastic Turkeys
i) Jihadists
j) DU Posters
k) Dowdsters
Or perhaps the school could take an aggressive counter-intuitive approach, in which case a name might be chosen from the following:
l) Guantanamo Bay Koran Flushers
m) X-Treme Abu Ghraib Tie-Up-and-Pointers
n) Chimpostein Hitlerburton Bushreich Hitlerchrists
Hey, it’s up to the school. Option n possibly wouldn’t fit on team uniforms.
Maybe Lucas ans Spielberg could chane the title of the third Indiana Jones movie, too. Indiana Jones and the Latest (but no doubt not last) Attempt to Loot Museums of Semitic (Which Means Arab, too, so don’t use the loaded term “anti-Semitic” because you’ve obviously bought into the Zionist media redefintion of the term) Antiquities.
Lileks is right. We lost.
You can say that again.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2005 06 14 at 01:29 PM • permalinkIt’s just Vermont, you gloomy Gusses! The game is still on. Report immediately to the locker room for a pep talk from Coach Hanson.
Posted by Joe Geoghegan on 2005 06 14 at 01:47 PM • permalinkAfter a little research on the state website…how about “Soylent Green Mountain Biscuits”?
Link -> Soylent-Green Biscuits
Although I personally liked “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys”. At least you’d get stylish berets to wear, non?
How about “Les Bien Français”. They could just shorten it to LesBiens too.
Posted by -keith in mtn. view on 2005 06 14 at 03:05 PM • permalinkIt won’t mean a lot to anyone in the US probably but the most successful side in the Super 12 Rugby competition here in the Southern Hemisphere (includes teams from New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa) are the Canterbury (from Christchurch in New Zealand) Crusaders. Their prematch entertainment includes cross-emblazoned armour wearing crusaders on horseback riding around the playing field. I’ve often wondered in these PC times how long it would be before someone complained about their name and image, but thankfully noone has. Makes me glad I don’t live in Vermont.
“I’ve often wondered in these PC times how long it would be before someone complained about their name and image…”
OTOH, would *YOU* want to be the one to complain to a champion rugby team about their name?
Probably walk home with your teeth in your hat, assuming you could walk at all…Posted by Old Grouch on 2005 06 14 at 05:05 PM • permalinkThe Champlain Jihadists could be encouraged from the sidelines be everyone’s favourite burkha-clad cheerleading squad… The Ji-Hotties!
Watch as they flawlessly recite school cheers, form incredible acrobat pyramids and callously blow up busloads of opposition fans!
“2-4-6-8! Guess who’s going to detonate?!”
The Teeny Weeny Deanie Screamies… (OK, Dean and a Teeny Weeny, redundant, but it’s got rhythm…)
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 14 at 07:42 PM • permalinkNo, we didn’t lose. Vermont lost.
But they’ve been lost for a long time.
Howard Dean, Pat Leahy, Bernie Sanders. Need I say more?
SMG
Posted by SMGalbraith on 2005 06 14 at 07:54 PM • permalinkChamplan Valley Catamites. Kind of sounds like Catamounts, the name of the University of Vermont teams.
(A catamite is a teenage boy kept by an older man for sexual pleasure, for those that didn’t know. It’s a particularly popular practice in the muslim world.)
Jamesh, the Florida State University’s teams are known as the Seminoles. (Named after the local Indian tribe, the Seminoles.) At the start of their home football games a real, live Seminole Indian (a student) will ride his horse out to the fifty-yard line and throw a flaming spear into the ground. Best damned start to a sporting event I’ve ever seen.
Posted by David Crawford on 2005 06 14 at 07:55 PM • permalinkWhats wrong with calling them “The French Army”
Posted by Harry Buttle on 2005 06 14 at 08:55 PM • permalinkHow about the “Metrosexuals”?
My alma mater (Univ of Illinois) is still getting beat up for our school symbol (NOT a mascot—doesn’t do interaction with fans, does his thing, gets off the field), Chief Illinwek.
Most of us alumni would willingly forego the Chief as a symbol if the Illini tribe didn’t like him. Unfortunately all the Illini were killed by their neighboring Native Americans before the White Man pushed them out.
There seem to be few to no people with more than 50% Native American blood who object. The major pushers are Ward Churchill-type hangers-on. One female seems to have about 1/64, the other major pushers have demonstrated no Native American heritage at all. Oh, well.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2005 06 14 at 09:53 PM • permalinkGardena HS in LA was forced to give up its name, the Mohicans, because, supposedly, all members of the tribe were dead and that the name now represented racist gloating. Ignored were the letters that the Mohican(Mohegan) tribe had sent to the school and the district asking that the name not be changed and that Cooper’s title was a literary license and that the tribe was still very much in existence.
Posted by Pat Patterson on 2005 06 14 at 10:09 PM • permalink#19, ErnieG I am so glad I don’t have a mouthful of anything. I nearly choked as it was.
I am so over this politically correct crap. There is a ‘rock’ band called Pacifier because they decided that being called Shihad was a bit too inflammatory.
You know the line has been crossed too far when ‘rock’ bands are worried about upsetting the Islamic fundies.
How about Champlain Valley Cringers? Why hide your intentions?
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2005 06 14 at 10:53 PM • permalinkActually Pacifier have changed their name back again. They originally changed it as they were due to go on tour to the States and it was shortly after 9/11, so they were worried the name might have an adverse affect on their impact there. However from comments made public by their lead singer and the content of some of their songs let’s just say if they were to vote in the U.S. they’d definitely be democrats.
Just want to note that my mom’s alma mater (Bishop Heelan High of Sioux City, Iowa), still proudly claims “Crusaders.” And the mascot is a medieval knight wearing cross vestments.
But hey, it’s a new world, and I guess it’s time to move on, high-school-nickname-wise.
Champlain Valley Ragin’ Rationalizers
Champlain Valley Hate Reason Wonderers
Champlain Valley Children of Pigs and Monkeys
Champlain Valley Rainbow Along-Getters
Champlain Valley Cowerin’ Supplicants
Champlain Valley Ransom Offerers
Champlain Valley Crimson SplatterThe Eunuchs, because they have no balls.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 15 at 12:50 AM • permalinkthe Champlain Valley TRAITORS
the Champlain Valley Newsweek subcribers
Posted by papertiger on 2005 06 15 at 02:22 AM • permalinkthe Champlain Valley Bloodstained Explosion
Posted by papertiger on 2005 06 15 at 02:26 AM • permalinkI can think of plenty of unprintable ones.
Printable, though, that’s a bit tricky.
Champlain Valley ChunderWonders? (I jsut like the sound of that one)
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2005 06 15 at 03:21 AM • permalinkThe FOAD Bitches
And sorry for the typo above. Need a spelchek.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2005 06 15 at 03:24 AM • permalink‘Champlain Valley Choads’ (Treacher would be proud).
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 06 15 at 04:49 AM • permalinkWell, they could rip off South Park and name themselves either the Sanitary Napkins or the Shit Sandwiches or maybe even the Douche Bags.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2005 06 15 at 08:30 AM • permalinkHow about one of those punchy singular indefinite noun nicknames that were in vogue in the 80’s - e.g., Utah Jazz, Orlando Magic, Colorado Avalanche, Miami Heat? Nothing says vintage 1990 marketing PC happythink like the Peoria Blast! or the Des Moines Electricity! or the Woonsocket Commotion!
In that spirit, the dictionary’s full of catchy nickname candidates:
The Champlain Valley Tolerance!
The Champlain Valley Restraint!
The Champlain Valley Cower!
The Champlain Valley Cringe!
The Champlain Valley Shrink!
The Champlain Valley Recoil!
The Champlain Valley Flinch!
The Champlain Valley Squirm!
The Champlain Valley Flight!
The Champlain Valley Prey!
The Champlain Valley Quarry!
The Champlain Valley Submission!Ah, fuck it. Just use the ‘Frenchmen’.
Given the way they quietly took it, let’s hear it for the Champlain Valley Aishas.
Posted by Jim Geones on 2005 06 15 at 09:53 AM • permalinkYou people are all carrying on as if the Crusaders had at least some passing resemblance to heroes. Remember, you’re talking about a gang of bloodthirsty jihadists: murderers, robbers, rapists, slave-takers. Just because some of their victims happened to be Moslem, and so are our current enemies, doesn’t make them good guys.
Nor do the Crusaders have anything to do with Vermont’s history, or that of the Champlain Valley, so they don’t have that excuse.
This isn’t like naming a team after brave but vanquished Indians, or even after local Indian-killers who were defending or expanding their homes, and - for good or ill - made modern-day Vermont possible. Nor does it involve made-up etymology, like the ridiculous notion that “redskin” refers to scalping. This is like calling a team “the Champlain Valley Nazis”, or “the Champlain Valley Lynchers”; you just wouldn’t do that, and if it was done you’d change it.
So, why do we worry about the name of a small and hardly significant high school in a small state? Well, Zev, you said:
Remember, you’re talking about a gang of bloodthirsty jihadists: murderers, robbers, rapists, slave-takers. Just because some of their victims happened to be Moslem, and so are our current enemies, doesn’t make them good guys.
If I revise this slightly to read something equally true, we get:
Remember, you’re talking about a gang of bloodthirsty jihadists: murderers, robbers, rapists, slave-takers. Just because some of their victims happened to be Christian, and so are our current enemies, doesn’t make them good guys.
Or perhaps:
Remember, you’re talking about a gang of bloodthirsty jihadists: murderers, robbers, rapists, slave-takers. Just because some of their victims happened to be Jewish, and so are our current enemies, doesn’t make them good guys.
These all are true statements. But many people will be frothing at the mouth about this. That’s because people (most like you) reject the full history of the Crusades.
Yeah, the Europeans were nasty buggers rampaging through the Middle East. But don’t forget the Moors rampaging through Europe. Osama bin Laden didn’t—he made that a major point in his fatwa declaring jihad against the West.
So why must we of the West apologize for what happen 600 friggin’ years ago, and the Arab world does not? When did you last walk up to the nearest Mosque and complain about their occupation of Spain during the Middle Ages?
It’s not that I expect the Arab world to apologize, as this all happened 600 years ago. Just as I don’t see how changing the name of a small and hardly significant high school in a small American state is going to make the Muslim world feel better.
Rewriting history helps no one. It’s time to move on with life, and deal with the real problems, not imagined slights.
It’s not the name change, Zev. It’s the priorities that these idiots have.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 15 at 01:18 PM • permalinkEr, no, Jeff, our current enemies are not Christian or Jewish, they’re Moslem. But that doesn’t mean that a gang of some of the worst thugs in history become good guys, just because some of their victims were Moslem. Quite a few of Stalin’s victims were Moslem too, but that doesn’t make him a hero.
Apologise? Who’s asking anyone to apologise for the crusaders? Not I, nor anyone I’ve seen on this thread, or in any discussion of this topic. All this is about is a school’s decision to stop lionising these jihadists. IMO that decision was entirely proper, but it seems that a whole lot of commenters here think it was the wrong thing to do! That they ought to have gone on calling themselves Crusaders, just because, well, no really good reason has been given, except that to change the name means looking like wimps or something.
Nazis and slavers and all sorts of nasty people are part of history, and nobody’s calling for it to be rewritten, but if you heard of a team called the Lynchers or the Slavers, and they changed it, wouldn’t you applaud them? How about if they were called the Jihadists? Would you support a change then?
Who said our current enemies are Muslim? Our current enemies are terrorists. They are largely Muslim, granted. But I don’t mistake one for the other, especially given the mental state of the extreme left.
No, you miss my point. People seem to think that we must apologize for every single bad thing that has happened since fire was invented.
Lynching was a real crime committed in the United States in the last 100 years. Slavery is an ongoing crime around the world.
The Crusades, however, happened 600 years ago.
Why worry about a name of a series of campaigns that took place before North America was discovered? There are real problems in this world that need attention. Like slavery, say. Or terrorism. Heck, how about this school just making sure the students can read? Don’t solve problems that don’t exist, except in the small minds of small people.
You wonder why we are commenting on this name change. I wonder why this name change was all that important in the first place.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 15 at 01:57 PM • permalinkIs there even a single Christian or Jew among our current enemies? I doubt it. They are Moslem. And as near as I can discern the logic of those who think the team should not have changed its name, it’s something like: Some of the Crusaders’ victims were Moslem; our enemies are Moslem; therefore Crusaders are worthy of having teams carry their name.
What difference does it make whether the crime is 100 years old or 600? Nobody today has any need to apologise for it, but nor should they be celebrating it. And those who do celebrate ancient crimes certainly ought to apologise for that.
Why worry about a name of a series of campaigns that took place before North America was discovered? Don’t worry about it. Just don’t name your team after it. Because if you do, you’re the one bringing it up, and celebrating it.
And you’re going on as if there was some sort of global campaign over the name of an obscure school in Vermont. I know of no reason to believe there was any such thing. I’ve no doubt that the campaign was initiated within the local community, and was conducted there. If your local team is named after a gang of thugs, that’s an important issue, and one you can do something about. The real question is why worry about things you can’t affect in Darfur or Zimbabwe or Antarctica, when right in your community this is going on? So they changed it, and good on them. And the change got some publicity, as it will; the rest of the world gets to cheer a bit of good that got done, a wrong that was corrected. And a bunch of ignorant commenters here on this blog lament the change, and wish it hadn’t happened.
Please answer me: why should the team have kept its name? In what possible way would that have been a good thing? And how does changing it in any way imply wimpiness, or weakness in the face of our current Jihadist enemies?
I refute the original claim, that the crusaders were
bloodthirsty jihadists: murderers, robbers, rapists, slave-takers.
.
Muslims didn’t have treasure beyond what they stole, so looting would be pointless.
Muslims are useless as slaves.
As far as the murder, war is murder, and the crusaders didn’t draw first blood.
As far as being rapists - would the beleagered muslim woman of the middle ages notice? She might think one of her second cousins looked at a white woman , and the judges sentence was being carried out, unless some man told her different.The Crusaders were nobel men fighting for a higher cause then personal base gratification. That’s why they won.
Posted by papertiger on 2005 06 15 at 04:24 PM • permalinkPapertiger - go read some history. Every word you wrote just now is a lie, including “and” and “the”. Anyone who thinks the crusaders were “nobel men” probably thinks the same of Osama bin Laden or Che Guevara. Though, come to think of it, those two did fight “for a higher cause then personal base gratification”, as you put it, while the crusaders, on the whole, were in it for the blood and the looting and the rape, and couldn’t give a damn about any “higher cause”, however misguided.
So go bother the indymediapersons or the margostanis. Or just jump in the lake.
And as near as I can discern the logic of those who think the team should not have changed its name, it’s something like: Some of the Crusaders’ victims were Moslem; our enemies are Moslem; therefore Crusaders are worthy of having teams carry their name.
What a load of crap. There was no such inference at all.
Take the awesome Canterbury Crusaders (who just gave my team another hiding). Why are they called that? It’s an image. They get to have cool soldier-types in armour riding on horses around the park, intimidating the opposition and shitting on the turf. Are they thinking about Moslems?
Maybe you better write to them and explain that they should change their name to Guys On Horses With Swords Who Didn’t Do Bad Stuff At All.
And you better have a talk to Hanna-Barbera about Crusader Rabbit. Jeez, it’s a long list, as mouseman5 says. All those kids’ pirate things etc.
What difference does it make whether the crime is 100 years old or 600?
Umm, mainly because in the meantime the word “crusade” has entered everyday usage as shorthand for anything undertaken in a zealous manner. If you see a sports team named Crusaders and your first thought goes back to the original Crusades and results in righteous outrage about this abominable choice of name, I’d suggest you’re overreacting. As mouseman5 pointed out, there are plenty of other team names that are also potentially offensive to some groups, but for some reason those people are grown up enough not to make a pointless fuss about it (and if they did, we’d be laughing at them, too).
Which is pretty much the whole point of this thread, one that you continue to miss. Nobody’s saying the name is inherently worthy of being kept - we’re saying it indicates a dramatic lack of perspective to consider it important enough to bother changing it, especially on the grounds of it being indicative of “religious oppression” (it’s sports, fer chrissakes). Since you seem to think this kind of nonsense is the localized equivalent of calling for change in Darfur, I can only conclude that you’re one of those people who have too much pent-up outrage bottled up inside.
Obligatory ad hominem: Did you know that Sero was the name for a national garbage recycling program in East Germany? How oddly appropriate.
The Christian crusaders stopped the Muslim crusaders from continuing their bloody crusade against christians and christendom. They failed in their attempt to take back north african and near eastern christian countries from the muslim conquerers whose crusade stretched across those areas converting, by the sword, those areas to the blood thirsty religion of Islam.
The language is different but the intentions were different. The Christian Crusades intent was to take back former christian lands from Muslim invaders. The Muslim Crusades were bent on simple conquest, conversion, and killing.
No real argument should take place without noting the differences in motivations (money, power, conquest, rape being a common motivation to both). One was born as a defense against the other, which was bent on world domination.
Kalroy
I agree wholeheartedly with the comment above re why bother changing the name at all, or considering it so damned important to do so. It is simply indicative of the times I’m afraid, where everyone is so damned scared of upsetting the sensitive Moslems. There has been a rugby team playing in England for a long time with the name “Saracens”. How likely is it the English will start a campaign to change that name due to its insensitivity to those descendents of Christians killed by the Saracens. Not very and rightly so, as most sane people will realise it is simply the name of a sports team rather than a description of the ideologies of its players and supporters. Similarly the Rangers soccer team in Scotland are known in some circles as “the Hun” (those circles being the rival Celtic supporters), however in that instance it probably is a good description of their supporters. To my knowledge there are no teams called “Mongols” although in S.Africa I understand there is a Soccer side called the something-or-other Zulus.
Vermont folk should realign their perspective I feel.Zen sevo
you’re the one who is historicly impaired.
For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.
Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders to this day.
With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed’s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.
That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.That’s history baby. Don’t get your history from the Beeb,or Hollywood, doofus.
In fact ChamplainValley Historical Doofus’s would make a fine new name.Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.
Posted by papertiger on 2005 06 15 at 10:01 PM • permalinkZev:
That 600 year old “crime” took place on the other side of the world by people who may or may not be my ancestors. I decline to accept responsibility for the acts of generations long ago.
Still, some people are trying to show that they don’t accept the Crusades as “holy”, and thus justified. Yet the Crusages were holy, from both the Christian and Muslim perspectives, since those people felt the wars to be religious. And the combatants clearly felt the campaigns as justified, else they would not have conducted them. Anything else is revisionist history.
But those wars took place so long ago that their history is that of literally another age. We weren’t there, either as a culture or a nation. Trying to apologize for the acts of generations long ago is nonsense.
Slavery and lynching are different in that those are crimes that were committed in the USA. For those, I am willing to accept the shame. Not the blame or punishment, but the shame. I acknowledge that, but I won’t accept any shame, blame, or whatever, regarding the Crusades.
On a similar theme, would you expect the Iranians to apologize for the Persians invasion of Greece thousands of years ago?
Groveling before the world in some form of token self-flagellation that makes no real difference is demeaning and debasing. And, quite frankly, I see it as a form of surrender to the Islamofacist terrorists.
Is there even a single Christian or Jew among our current enemies?
Evidently, you have not kept up on your current events. Don’t you recall Michael Moore praising the Iraqi terrorists as “Minutemen”? George Galloway’s hateful bile? The materiel support for the terrorists flowing from non-Muslims in Europe? And so on? One need not carry a rifle in order to be an an enemy.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 16 at 01:14 AM • permalinkChaucer’s “verray parfit, gentil knight” was a crusader, if I remember correctly. He went on pilgrimage directly upon coming home in his dirty, bloody clothes. So, Zev Sero, the medieval crusaders were not perceived as mercenary buccaneers. Why do you think they were?
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2005 06 16 at 08:05 PM • permalink
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The suggestions I liked best were “The Dhimmies” and (better) “The Dhummies”.