"Young people need to have the ability to express themselves without worrying about being punished when they get to school."

"I never could have imagined that one simple snap would turn into a Supreme Court case, but I’m proud that my family and I advocated for the rights of millions of public school students."

Said Brandi Levy (now an 18-year-old college student), quoted in "Supreme Court sides with high school cheerleader in free-speech dispute over profane Snapchat rant" (WaPo).

The decision is 8-1, with only Justice Thomas dissenting, and Justice Breyer writing the opinion about Levy's barbaric yawp: "Fuck school, fuck softball, fuck cheer, fuck everything."

From the WaPo article (by Robert Barnes):

"My second year we were told we had to be sexier, so we went that route, and now they're saying it's too sexy and women aren’t being respected."

"Now they’re solving the problem by getting rid of it, and that’s kind of a slap in the face to women who worked so hard on the team."

Said Tiffany Fontaine, a former member of the Milwaukee Bucks dance team, quoted in "Milwaukee Bucks Dancers are being replaced with the gender-inclusive 414 Crew. Former members say it's a 'slap in the face'" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). The new group will have "dancing, tumbling, break-dancing, tricking and other unique talents." Sounds great to me. Styles in cheerleading change, and the sexy all-female approach isn't the most traditional style. It's a style and if it's gone out of style, good! I'd like to see some men and some break dancing. And I don't know what "tricking" is, but it sounds more promising than the sexy cheerleaders show that came from the 1970s.

"We're kind of constantly looking to evolve and broaden our reach and be as inclusive as we possibly can," Bucks President Peter Feigin said. "We've seen the trend change. We've seen dance entertainment teams morph into a lot of different things, and we loved what the co-ed dance teams were starting to look like."

It's a trend to express the idea with the word "inclusive." But it's not the words that matter. It's the show.

I looked up "tricking":



And here's Wikipedia on the history of cheerleading. It was an all-male activity until the 1940s:

"North Korea dangled a meeting in hopes of the vice president softening his message, which would have ceded the world stage for their propaganda during the Olympics."

"North ­Korea would have strongly ­preferred the vice president not use the world stage to call attention to those absolute facts or to display our strong alliance with those committed to the ­maximum-pressure campaign. But as we’ve said from Day One about the trip: This administration will stand in the way of Kim’s desire to whitewash their murderous regime with nice photo ops at the Olympics."

Said Nick Ayers, chief of staff to Mike Pence, quoted in WaPo in "Pence was set to meet with North Korean officials during the Olympics before last-minute cancellation."

Speaking of nice photo ops at the Olympics, how about those cheerleaders? "EXCLUSIVE: Exposed – the sinister masked minders watching every step of the North Korean cheerleaders as they try to turn Winter Olympics into propaganda victory for Kim Jong-Un" (Daily Mail):

CNN called them 'weirdly mesmerizing' and Vox described them as 'social media stars.' The Wall Street Journal called them 'weapons of mass distraction.' In reality, however, their every move is guarded carefully by a group of guards who wear masks in an apparent attempt to keep their identities shielded....

[I]n 2006, 21 members of North Korean cheering squads who traveled to South Korea for sports events were sent to a prison camp for talking about what they saw in the South....

What are the cheers of the North Korean cheerleaders?

WaPo translates 3 cheers: 1. "Go team," 2. "Nice to meet you," and 3. "My home town."

I also heard someone on NBC-TV explaining that one of the cheers — when the women's hockey team was losing terribly (8-0) — was "Cheer up." That makes cheerleading so literal.

"North and South Korea have agreed to form their first joint Olympic team and will march together under a unified flag during the opening ceremony..."

The Daily Mail reports.

The two Koreas agreed to form a combined women's ice hockey team to take part in next month's Winter Olympics in PyeongChang in the South next month. Seoul's Unification Ministry says the agreement was during talks on Wednesday at the border village of Panmunjom....

North Korea will send a delegation of about 550, including 230 cheerleaders, 140 artists and 30 Taekwondo players for a demonstration, the statement added.

Great. I guess. 230 North Korean cheerleaders... not really picturing that, but okay.

The child abuse of forcing cheerleaders to do splits.

The Denver police are investigating the cheerleading coach, Ozell Williams. according to the NYT.

On June 15, Kirstin Wakefield, the mother of the [13-year-old] girl seen [in] the video, sent an email to the assistant principal who was put on leave this week, asking what the administration planned to do about the incidents, according to KUSA.

“I have attached a video of the forced splits she and her other team members were forced to do at cheerleading camp and practices; unless they had a doctor’s note,” it read. "My husband and I would like to know what the administration is going to do about my daughter’s injury and how it happened.”

In an on-camera interview with KUSA, Ms. Wakefield said: “This is a grown man pushing my 13-year-old girl so hard against her will, while she’s crying and screaming for him to stop, that he’s ripping tissues in her body.”

I have not watched the video. 

ADDED: The NYT hides the racial aspect of the case, but here, in The Denver Post, you can see that Ozell Williams is a black man.

Williams, who is also the founder of Mile High Tumblers 5280, said that what is shown in the video is being taken out of context. “You can definitely say that what was in the video could be seen in a different light,” Williams said. “I would love to tell my story, but I can’t say anything else at this time.”

Bill Clinton — doing his first rally for Hillary — talks about Franklin Pierce and Abraham Lincoln and the need for a President who fits the spirit of the times.

I jumped in somewhere in the middle, when he was reminiscing about his early years with Hillary, drawing from what was meant to seem like a wellspring of emotion. Tears didn't come, but tears were at least implied. What a humble servant of the poor young Hillary was, he wanted us to know.

Then he shifted, for the ending, into some theory of the presidency, about how Presidents succeed when they are right for the time. He talks about Franklin Pierce, who, he tells us, couldn't possibly have succeeded in his time, and then Abraham Lincoln, who, he informs us, wouldn't have been a great President if he'd served in the 1950s. Lincoln was "gripped with crippling depression," and that would not have been successful in the 1950s, but it was just the frame of mind, he tells us, to suit the Civil War.

I don't know if Bill thought that theory up on his own or got it from some American history scholar, but of course, it led to the conclusion that Hillary is what goes with the particular time that we are in now. What exactly is it about Hillary and our time that fit together so well? I don't think he explained it.

Were we supposed to infer that the other candidates, whatever their positive attributes, are somehow not what is needed for our time? I don't know if Bill meant us to think about that, but it called to mind for me something Donald Trump said in his "Face the Nation" interview yesterday:

[O]ur country has no spirit.... But I would be very enthusiastic, like I am right now, toward the country. We need spirit. We need a cheerleader. President Obama is a bad cheerleader. I thought he would be a good cheerleader. I thought he would be a great cheerleader, actually. That's the one thing I thought, is that he was going to be a great cheerleader. He was really a big divider. We need cheerleading.

"It all began last year; the girls kept asking me and my cousin to do cheerleading. At first we didn’t want to do it because it just isn’t right."

"You don’t hear football players doing cheerleading, but I thought about it and it is our senior year, so I might as well do something fun."

“Olive [Sagapolu] has by far exceeded my expectations,” said [University of Wisconsin senior cheerleading co-captain Gisella] Mendoza. “We just needed Olive for the stunt work. He can tumble, dance and jump off the cheer floor. All of his teammates admire and respect him for that work ethic and just being an overall great guy. Olive is a great athlete, competitor [and] friend, and now we can all say he is a great cheerleader.”...

“The biggest thing I will probably take away from cheerleading is teamwork, working together as a team and trying to reach that goal and just trying to win,” said Sagapolu. “At Wisconsin, we will work together as a team and make it to the Big Ten championship. Knowing that your brother is right there by your side and teamwork is definitely something I have learned, even more so from cheerleading.”

Inane War-on-Women headlines of the day.

From The Washington Post:

1. "75 years after ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ we need Ma Joad in the White House." The author, an English professor named Susan Shillinglaw, expresses enthusiasm for Ma Joad's threats of violence — that she’ll "knock you belly-up with a bucket" or "slap ya with a stick a stove wood" when you're sleeping or have your back turned. Domestic violence is such a thrill when it's a woman hitting a man, I guess. Shillinglaw also admires the rabid totalitarian spirit: "She would fire up the country with collective energy, too. 'Maybe if we was all mad in the same way.'" A demagogue would be great... if she's a female demagogue.

2. "Why we root for Chelsea Clinton." This one is just egging you on to say I don't root for Chelsea Clinton. Watch out. It's a trap. Don't react by attacking Chelsea. That's what they want you to do, and when you do that, you're giving them a target in the war. You've got to outsmart the enemy... and by enemy, I mean devious liberal politicos who are propagating the meme that conservatives want to hurt women (i.e., they are at war against women). So I would recommend responding to this article by latching onto that word "root." If "we" are "rooting" for someone, then "we" are cast as cheerleaders. Cheerleaders???!!!! Sexist stereotype! I am not a cheerleader looking on while someone else plays and scores. I am the active participant! How dare you consign me to the sidelines, with pom-poms, hopping around girlishly, admiring somebody else! See? That's how you do it.

Why is the urge to impress women called a "ludicrous tendency of men" in The Wall Street Journal?

Perhaps you've noticed this column by Robert M. Sapolsky titled "The Cheerleader Effect: What Men Do to Impress." Read the whole thing. There are a number of interesting angles. I just want to highlight the depreciation of male desire:

[M]ales can be kind of pathetic.

When women are present or when men are prompted to think about women, they act differently, research shows. Well, duh. But in unexpected ways. A 2008 study in the journal Evolutionary Psychology showed that in the mere presence of women as witnesses, men become more likely to jaywalk and to wait until the last second to dash on to a bus. This reflects, no doubt, the well-known belief among men that jaywalking means you're a Roman gladiator of irrepressible virility. As I said, pathetic....

There is also a darker side to the tendency of men to show off in the presence of women....

Evidence of this "darker side"? One study showed that the presence of women made men more likely to make "loud blasts of noise" while playing competitive games. Another showed that the presence of women made men "more likely to endorse aggressive stances about war."

Now, other research shows that the presence of women also moves men toward more charitable giving and service. So Sapolsky concludes that "There's an important point here":

The allure of the opposite sex makes men more violent, but only, it seems, in circumstances where violence is rewarded with higher status. 

That's a weird way to talk about football games, but let's continue.

When status can be achieved in a more socially desirable way, things work differently. 

What's not socially desirable about athletic success? Why be dismissive of that? Because:

In short, with the right social arrangements, this ludicrous tendency of men can be harnessed not only to encourage a ferocious goal-line stand but to make the world a kinder place.

Harnessed! So maleness has (or tends to have) a psychological structure to it, but the point of understanding that psychology is to craft it into a harness so society as a whole can most successfully turn male energy into benefits for the group. This idea of manipulating men is supposed to seem justified because the male psychology is ludicrous. Meanwhile, females are the means to the end. They too are useful for these manipulations. But somehow this harnessing and exploitation of the individual makes the world "a kinder place."

It's not kinder to think about human individuals this way. Our deepest sexual urges are not ludicrous. They are fundamental to the beauty and meaning of our lives. To ridicule our minds and bodies like that and to throw away what is most basic and real because it seems possible to extract more charitable giving and service, that is beyond ludicrous. It's evil.

When you think about Rick Perry, The New Yorker would like you to think about squeezed testicles.

From From "comment" in The New Yorker by Lawrence Wright:

Perry is the first graduate of Texas A & M to govern Texas. When he was a freshman, in 1968, the student body looked much like him: white, male, determinedly rural....  At A & M, Perry ran the winning campaign of his friend John Sharp for student-body president. In response, Sharp got his friend elected one of the campus’s five “yell leaders”—male cheerleaders. Perry considered being a yeller the higher office. A typical yell is: “Squads left! Squads right! / Farmers, farmers, we’re all right! / Load, ready, aim, fire, boom!” During tense moments in a football game, yellers grab their balls and shout, “Squeeze, Aggies!”

I was inclined to disbelieve that ball-squeezing thing. But I Googled it. There are some strange American folk traditions, apparently. But... why is this in an article about Rick Perry? Why merge that image with him? There's some psychological manipulation going on here!

Note that there is an ongoing effort among the media elite to create an aversion to Rick Perry by making him seem hyper-masculine in a disgusting or inappropriate way. I'll be keeping an eye on this. If you see evidence of this phenomenon, let me know — in the comments here or by email.

ADDED: A reader emails:

Squeezing is only figurative, and the yell leaders do it when the football team is attempting to kick a field goal.  Before the ball is snapped, they run down to the end zone and kneel down on one knee, abreast of one another with one hand over their crotch, waiting expectantly for the kick.  The "squeeze" is a figurative gesture, nobody really squeezes.  It's all done in good fun--a bombastic notion that self-induced pain would affect an outcome on the field.  People in the stands do it also, even girls. 

About that cheerleader who wouldn't cheer for the player she'd accused of rape...

Let's talk about the free speech and other legal issues, but you've got to get the timeline right.

"Do you think it's gonna be a Packers blowout? Do you see where that could happen?"

Rush Limbaugh asked Ken Hutcherson on Friday's show:

THE HUTCH:  Well, I do.  That's why I was gonna make you promise me that you won't turn the TV off at halftime.

RUSH:  I would never turn the Super Bowl off at halftime no matter what's happening....

THE HUTCH:  ... But if you will notice, why do most advertisers want to advertise on the first half?

RUSH:  Well, Hutch, it's because the women stop watching at halftime.

THE HUTCH: (laughing) No.  Because they know, man, that the Super Bowl has a tendency to be one-sided. We've had some great Super Bowls in the last....

RUSH:  Yeah, but it hasn't been the case in the last five or six years.  This game has gone down to the last play...

THE HUTCH:  But there is a possibility that someone could be put to shame this week. I'm not gonna push, but I believe my Green Bay Packers are gonna come through....

So, Packers win in a blowout, right? Anyway, you see the subject of women came up. It comes up again at the end of the discussion:

"Competitive cheer may, some time in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX."

Wrote Judge Stefan R. Underhill of the United States District Court in Bridgeport:

“Today, however, the activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students.”...

Underhill’s decision was a victory for the five women’s volleyball players who, along with their coach, sued Quinnipiac in 2009 after the university announced it was cutting their team and adding competitive cheerleading....

This is a complicated issue. Penn & Teller took it up in the first episode of the new season of "Bullshit!" I thought they woefully underplayed the Title IX legal issues, which they mainly cheaply disparaged by showing a feminist in an unattractive light and accusing her of wanting to force young women into her stereotype of what a woman should be, as this preview shows:



ADDED: The question shouldn't be what does "sport" mean in a general sense, but how it should be defined with respect to the pursuit of gender equality in education. As for the Quinnipiac case, the judge has to deal with the existing statute, regulations, and case law.