A public record of some of my thoughts. Feel free to comment, but don't expect me to respond.
P&C Review Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ from Lagunitas, then do five topics in five minutes each.
I don’t follow the royals, so I don’t know the whole story, but … damn!
P&C drink and review Crowhill’s anise-flavored porter, then discuss the differences between equality and equity.
Equality focuses on equal treatment. Equity focuses on equal outcomes.
Equity is the right choice in some situations, but not in others. But “equity” has become the modern rallying cry, as if it’s a cure-all. Equity is particularly misplaced when it’s applied to groups rather than to individuals, so the combination of equity and identity politics creates a particularly bad outcome.
The Washington Redskins Football Team has decided to get rid of their cheerleaders (what a sexist idea! — why should women be cheering the men?) and replace them with a coed dance team. There have been some scandals involving the cheerleading squad, like the team execs inviting donors to have back-seat passes to topless photo shoots, and that sort of thing.
The Libertarian in me (an increasingly smaller part) says “Hey, if women want to objectify themselves for their own reasons, that’s their choice, why should we stop them.” And plenty of women choose to objectify themselves. Just look at Instagram.
This situation is different because the groups has (apparently) been expected to participate in topless calendars. For reasons that are explained well in The Economics of Sex, once you allow some cheerleaders to go topless, there’s pressure on the others to do it, and those who don’t participate lose some opportunities. (“C’mon, what’s wrong with you? The rest are doing it!”)
I have two friends who were Reskinettes, and I used to work with a Tampa Bay Bucs cheerleader. None of them were the type to pose for topless calendars.
Cheerleading teams used to have rules. It was about cheerleading. There was no fraternizing with the players, and certainly no topless calendars. It seems to me the current scandals are not because of cheerleading, but because they’ve tried to transform cheerleading into something else. Cheerleading should be about cheerleading.
Like so many other things, cheerleading has become more and more sexy over the years, and one of my friends was all apologetic and defensive about her participation in such a thing. And that was back in the 80s!
But cheerleading has nothing on dance teams in the sexy department. At least in my experience. Cheerleading routines have definitely become raunchier, but the couple times I’ve seen dance teams at professional events, I thought I was watching soft pornography.
Changing from a cheerleading squad to a dance team won’t solve the problems. People need to decide what it is they’re after, and — as with any interaction between the sexes — they need to set clear boundaries. Without that, the dance team will have just as many scandals as the cheerleading squad.
Hayes Brown, an opinion writer on MSNBC, seems to give Republicans more credit than they deserve.
It’s common to imagine that your opponent is more thoughtful, calculating and sneaky than he really is. Their chaos and disorganization is all part of a clever plot, you see. The trick is to figure it out. Brown thinks he has.
Brown asks why conservatives are upset about the “un-publishing” of six Dr. Seuss books, when they should (he thinks) be uniting against Biden’s COVID bill?
The core of the GOP’s war plan is to go on offense with these skirmishes in the culture war while at the same time focusing on heavy defense and a siege mentality in Washington.
He might be right on the second half of that statement — that the GOP will obstruct and delay and spend two years on defense. But I could only hope and pray that the first part were true. If it were, I might become a Republican!
The GOP hasn’t gone on the offense on any “culture war” issues for a very long time. Not in any meaningful way, that is. They’ll say all the right things in their campaign speeches, and on Tucker Carlson, but they don’t do anything.
Donald Trump did a little to combat wokeism, but much more needs to be done, because the woke are a bigger threat to the country than COVID.
That sounds ridiculous, because COVID kills people, while all wokeism does is divide the country into the intolerably stupid and those who are passive in the face of intolerable stupidity. But wokeism is leading the country towards a form of authoritarianism that will kill a lot more people than COVID.
There’s an ugly tendency is the heart of man that comes out from time to time as pogroms, witch trials, “cultural revolutions” and inquisitions. That’s where we’re headed unless the GOP wakes up and grows a pair.