The Plaid Crewe started as a Scottish-American badminton club in the mid-1840s. Following an unfortunate incident involving the club's owner, a shuttlecock, and a young Moroccan boy, the TPC was indefinitely banned from competitive play. Faced with the prospect of getting real jobs, the players continued to meet regularly, sharing the news of the day and occasionally playing badminton.
During the Civil War, a shuttlecock shortage forced The Plaid Crewe to occupy their time in other ways. While most able-bodied men went off to war, TPC declined to serve due what they vaguely described as a “conflict of interest.”
It was around this time when, T. Travis Tenderloin II, then the club’s captain took the position of The Plaid Crewe’s first editor-in-chief. His first order of business was to drop the “e” from “Crewe,” maintaining that nouns should never end with a vowel. This seemingly illogical editorial stance would complicate the TPC’s reporting for the next quarter century.
At the height of the war, the TPC capitalized on the still new science of photography, releasing a scandalous photo entitled “Robert E. Lee in a Petticoat,” which was circulated widely throughout both the North and the South. According to Wikipedia (as of 10:38 a.m. on July 29, 2010), the photo was so demoralizing to Confederate Forces that it is often cited as the turning point of the war in favor of the North.
Following the war, the TPC managed to use its popularity to get reinstated as a professional competitive badminton club. However, with their newfound fame came great hubris. The TPC’s conduct on the court began to garner them an unfavorable reputation on the club circuit.
At one point in 1899, then-Governor of New York Theodore Roosevelt, attended contest match between The Plaid Crew and the Fancy Knickerbockers of New York. So disgusted was Roosevelt by TPC’s display on the court that he referred to it as “a mockery of the American spirit of good and fair competition of sport,” and threatened to “strike each member with the back of his hand in the manner one might use to discipline a bitch hound, until bloodied.”
Gov. Roosevelt had to be restrained by no less than seven members of his detail, and was advised that such a display of brutality towards “ne’er-do-wells” might quash his aspirations of higher office. The TPC responded in typical fashion by releasing an incriminating photo depicting Roosevelt’s penchant for an arcane and controversial sex act called “cyclophelia.”
The photo so enraged Gov. Roosevelt that upon being sworn in as president, he created a secret task force to dismantle the TPC. This action set in motion a chain of events that forced the TPC to disband, and, ultimately, resulted in the admission of Oklahoma as the 46th state of the Union.
To be continued...
