Sometimes the oddest developments make crystal clear a truth that should have been evident much earlier.
The Minnesota Vikings, for a reason only the Minnesota Vikings can explain, hired two dudes to be cheerleaders.
If you’re an old school football fan or a student of the college game, you might be picturing a guy wearing a team sweater and holding a bullhorn. You might think his job is to throw the girls into the air and catch them.
That is, you might think of a cheerleader as a person who leads the cheers, but no. In an NFL stadium, the booming public address system leads cheers. Minneapolis’s U.S. Bank Stadium seats 73,000 people; any “cheer leader” would need a really big bullhorn.
For decades, NFL cheerleaders have had one job: dancing, provocatively — a bit for the fans, but mostly for the TV cameras that do closeups going into and out of commercial breaks. In other words, NFL cheerleaders have long provided the sex that goes with football’s violence.
The Washington Commanders of late made that clear. The team, formerly called the Washington Redskins, published a calendar with cheerleaders photographed topless, and according to an investigation into the former ownership, team funders were welcomed to witness the photoshoot on the beach. Wealthy friends of the team were invited to pick a cheerleader from a “menu” to come entertain them at a nightclub or in a luxury box.
The team treated the cheerleaders as pieces of meat because that’s how the league and its broadcast partners have always treated these women. Their job is to be half-naked, sexy dancers.
Now, one of these twerking, gyrating, half-naked dancers is a man. Some commentators on the political Right are upset because, well, who wants to watch a dude do that? But the grossness of watching a guy act that way, maybe, should flip a light switch in the minds of these commentators: Why are we fine with women being treated that way? Why is this part of America’s Sunday afternoon family entertainment?
NFL teams don’t need these dancers. Not every team has them. None of the teams should.
SOROS DA DROPS CHARGES AGAINST FAIRFAX BROTHEL
A father, trying to be faithful to his wife, should be able to sit down to watch a game on Sunday afternoon without exposing himself and his sons (whom he’s trying to educate in chastity) to wriggling female flesh, and without exposing his daughters to this objectified and commercialized view of what men want from women.
Now, thanks to the Vikings, maybe more folks will realize how gross this is.