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Honolulu Lite
AS someone who attended a college whose mascot was a beaver, I have to laugh about the University of Hawaii football team changing its name from the presumably prissy "Rainbows" to the mucho macho "Warriors." UH gets tough
at end of rainbowCompared to the image of a large aquatic rodent, a rainbow positively reeks of manly virility.
But there apparently were people who believed it was demeaning for UH football players to be called "Rainbows," "Bows" or even "Rainbow Warriors."
Rainbows don't inspire fear in opponents. The colored arcs are not normally associated with knocking somebody's head off or ripping an arm out of a socket while trying to get hold of a funny-shaped ball made of animal hide. Rainbows are in the same image genus as kittens, soap bubbles and lambs gamboling in fields of poppies.
So amid pomp and ceremony (and usual whining by the Association of Politically Correct Busy Bodies Against All Sports Logos and Mascots), the UH this week unveiled its new logo (which appears to be the letter "H" after receiving 30,000 volts from an electric chair) and revealed that the men's football team will officially be known as "Warriors" and not "Rainbow Warriors," "Angry Kittens," "Soap Bubbles from Hell" or any other mushy sobriquet.
THE problem, as was hinted by a number of sports officials, was that the rainbow has a specific meaning in the gay community. It's like, if you put a rainbow decal on the bumper of your car, you are telling the world that you're da kine.
Members of other teams apparently used the rainbow-gay association to ridicule or tease UH athletes and that's why the rainbow had to go, at least for the men's football team.
Now, I went to Oregon State University where the mascot was the above-mentioned beaver, so I think I know something about ridicule. The beaver is not considered one of the fiercest creatures in the animal kingdom. The word also has an unfortunate sexual connotation that cannot be discussed in a family newspaper.
Nevertheless, OSU has stuck with the beaver as its mascot and we students became proud of it. We used it in a counter-intuitive way against opponents. What's more embarrassing to the enemy: being beaten by the University of Southern California "Trojans" or a bunch of beavers? (The yearly game between the OSU Beavers and the University of Oregon Ducks was a showpiece of understated macho-ness.)
Think how embarrassing it was for teams beaten by the UH football squad last year to slink back home and admit they were beaten? ("You let a bunch of Rainbows kick your butt?")
It's too late. The Warriors are Warriors now. Other UH sports teams are still free to call themselves Rainbows, which is a little odd. Seems like a school has to be one thing or another. We were not the football "OSU Beavers," the basketball "OSU Marmots" and the baseball "OSU Wharf Rats." You gotta pick your critter.
If the UH football team is going to continue its macho makeover, it's going to have to change the name of the campus store that sells "Warrior" merchandise. The store is called "RainBowTique." How precious. Why not call it "Wussies?" Real men don't shop in boutiques, especially boutiques associated with rainbows. I suggest renaming the store the "UH Warriors Little Shop of Horrors and Bargain Dungeon of Pain." Now THAT sounds manly.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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