Now That Football Season is Over . . .

Dennis Prager asks Why Is There A War On Cheerleaders?

If I were to tell you that a growing group of killjoys wants to ban NFL cheerleading, would you guess that this group is on the political left or right?

Must be the right, right? They're the religious ones with all the sexual hang-ups.

Wrong.

They're on the left.

And what's their problem with cheerleading?

I'll let them speak for themselves.

In The Boston Globe, Margery Eagan, Globe columnist and co-host of NPR's "Boston Public Radio," wrote a column titled "It's time to say goodbye to the NFL cheerleaders." She described NFL cheerleading as "creepy and demeaning."

USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour came to the same conclusion: "The underlying premise of NFL cheerleaders is degrading. ... NFL cheerleaders need to go."

Chicago Tribune sports reporter Shannon Ryan wrote, "The league has shown only that it regards cheerleaders as pieces of sideline eye candy." To make her point, she asked, "why aren't there scantily dressed male cheerleaders and dance teams?"

Only the well-educated could ask such a stupid question — because only the highly educated deny that, with few exceptions, the only people who would like to see scantily dressed male cheerleaders are gay men.

But we have them anyway.

In USA Today, Yale Divinity School Director of Communications Tom Krattenmaker added a theological voice to the anti-cheerleader chorus. "It's time," he intoned, "to call this out for what it is: demeaning to women and an anachronism that ought to be beneath the male fans to whom this titillating eye candy is served." This sentence, and his whole piece, is what goes for deep thought on the left today. He doesn't explain how being an NFL cheerleader is "demeaning." He simply declares it so. Did he bother to interview any cheerleaders? I did, and the consensus among cheerleaders is that it is one of their greatest life experiences.

Jacie Scott, a black woman who retired from being a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader in 2016, wrote in response to Nancy Armour: "I spent four years as a cheerleader in the NFL, and the experiences that each year brought helped shape me into the woman I am today. ... I saw countries I never imagined seeing. I made a positive impact in lives, young and old, and I did it all with 30-something incredible women. I wouldn't trade my time as a cheerleader for anything."

Don't overthink this, Dennis, they hate cheerleading, just as they hate football for the most part, because we, the deplorables, like it. They hate the boys who go out for football, who might have given them wedgies in high school, they hate the girls who go out for cheerleading because they were mostly better looking and more popular (girls)and wouldn't date them (boys), and they hate the people who like football because they support the football players and the cheerleaders instead of AOC and Bernie Sanders. It's no deeper than that.

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Pre-Valentine’s Day Pinups ready for action.