Another liberal brainstorm (that's an oxymoron)--Oregon U. eliminates cheerleaders! This is the epitome of the bassetman, Xico, Rep. "bring us all down to the least common denominator" liberal mentality that is watering down America and neutering the country from within! 
This one is quite literally unbelievable, but not surprising from the blue state of Oregon and from a liberal college administration. http://www.townhall.com/opinion/colu...07/192984.html Quote:
Smells like school spirit, alright
Apr 7, 2006
by Nathanael Blake ( bio | archive | contact )
CORVALLIS, OR -- The Oregon State University athletic department has decided to ground the cheerleading squad, prohibiting high-flying stunts – and any excitement or athleticism. Tryouts for next year’s team have been cancelled. A message (now removed) on the team’s web site said that "there will be a Spirit Squad that will wear khakis and polos and lead the crowd in place of the traditional cheerleaders." The athletic department has also announced plans to eliminate Mom and Apple Pie.
To be honest, I’m not fond of the professionalization of college athletics, nor of the circus that’s become of sport in general. Social critic Christopher Lasch had a point when he argued that cheerleading contributes to the degradation of sport and the contamination of its standards by turning it into spectacle. If the school decided to give up all its athletic programs to return the focus of this academy to academics, I would have stood up and cheered (and promptly been lynched by my fellow students). There is a case to be made against cheerleading, but OSU’s contained nary a good reason.
Of those cited, the first is safety, with the recent broken neck sustained by a University of Southern Illinois cheerleader cited as an example. But OSU’s squad hasn’t sustained any such catastrophic injuries, and despite the risks, the cheerleaders are apparently distraught at the rules being enacted. And though football is the most dangerous of all college sports, the athletic department hasn’t any plans to reduce the risk to our players by restricting the team to a flag football league.
After safety, the reasons offered for the change migrate from illogic to the realm of gibbering lunacy. They want to create a more "inclusive" and "diverse" team, and are concerned over issues of body image, saying that a 180-pound girl has a right to be on the cheer squad and that weight requirements are discriminatory. In short, since only allowing pretty, athletic girls onto the cheerleading squad makes ugly, overweight girls feel bad, cheerleading as we know it has to go.
It would be nice to dismiss this as simply another example of the politically correct nuthouses that are college campuses. Unfortunately, it’s symptomatic of a systemic problem in American society, which is rooted in a mistaken conception of equality.
Philippe Bénéton calls this "equality by default" which declares that "the other is my equal because he cannot be more ‘human,’ that is to say better, than me." This conception of the equality of man seeks to "eliminate all distinction between reason and unreason, decency and indecency, the sacred and the profane, genius and farce…" Or, in this case, between the beautiful and the ugly, the athletic and the non-athletic.
Such equality can only be supported by appealing to relativism. A tumbling performance by a lithe group of athletes is better than puffing, flabby girls waving pom-poms. We might criticize the first for being too risqué in their attire, but they are indisputably superior athletically and aesthetically.
Regardless of what the athletic department says, there is no right to be a cheerleader, and declaiming otherwise only debases cheerleading. If a thing is to have value then it must have exclusivity. If cheerleading is to be beautiful, it must exclude the ugly; if it is to be athletic, it must exclude those who are not physically fit. Of course, such standards are going to wound pride and incite envy, prompting calls for egalitarianism.
C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape observed that this demand for equality is "made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept...and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation."
Regarding the concerns over the "body image problems" cheerleading is purported to instill in young women, such complaints are common in our society, which obsesses over appearances, and then obsesses over its obsession. But even though America has oodles of problems on this point, reality remains: some people are better looking than others.
Since cheerleading is becoming "inclusive" and something everyone has a right to, I think it’s time to shake up the rest of the football spectacle. How about the marching band? It’s a travesty that bass guitar isn’t a part of it, and this discrimination against my instrument must end! I know that the amplifier presents scads of problems when it comes to actually marching, but I’m sure they’ll be able to change their habits to accommodate my rights to membership.
Why stop there? I’m a washed up soccer-player who hasn’t ever played organized football (games in recess were most definitely not organized), but by the athletic department’s logic I have a right to play. Admittedly, I don’t know a tight end from a cabbage, but keeping me off the squad because of that is clearly discriminatory and elitist, and if OSU teaches anything, it’s that those sentiments are evil.
Florence King observed bitterly that "elitism means a love of excellence and superiority, but America has declared war on both and developed a sick love of the lowest common denominator to make sure no one becomes too fine for our touted democracy. We are almost at the point of regarding every virtue as elitist."
If tomorrow, we were to wake up and find that cheerleading had miraculously vanished from the earth, I wouldn’t mourn it. But some of the motives behind OSU’s decision are distressingly reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut’s short distopia, Harrison Bergeron, which opens with the following.
"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."
| Next liberals will want to eliminate college sports because only the best get to play!!!
Last edited by Mulderator : 07-Apr-2006 08:28 PM.
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