Posted 5/04/2005 05:54:00 PM by Douglas

Every morning when I get up I'm eternally thankful that the State of Texas, in all her benevolent wisdom is there looking out for me. Imagine the horrors I'd face if I went to a high school football ball game and I saw cheerleaders doing a sexually suggestive dance? No joke, cheerleaders?!?

Sideline booty-shakin' at Texas high school football games would be restricted to more ladylike performances from the cheering squad, under legislation approved Tuesday by the Texas House.

Is this Texas or Nazi Germany?

The bill would prohibit "overtly sexually suggestive" routines at school-sponsored events, giving the state education commissioner authority to request that school districts review performances.

All these years of my life I've wasted in engineering when all along, this has been my true calling. Reviewing cheerleader's routines to make sure they're not too sexual? Good lord, where do I sign up? I'll work for minimum wage.

"Girls can get out and do all of these overly sexually performances and we applaud them and that's not right," said Democratic Rep. Al Edwards of Houston, who filed the legislation.

Representative Al Edwards (D-Houston), you're a fag. What the hell else are cheerleaders for? Encourage recycling? Promote the metric system? It sure as hell isn't anything to do with football. Pretty much shakin' their asses is it.

Edwards argued that lascivious exhibitions are a distraction for high school students that result in pregnancies, high school dropouts, contraction of AIDS and herpes and "cutting off their youthful life at an early age."

"Distractions," in my estimation, has yet to cause a single pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, and I'd expect a state representative to have had this talk with his father by now. But there was at least one voice of reason on the House floor: Rep Senfronia Thompson, (D-Houston). Hit it, Senfronia:

"How is this bill advancing the agenda of the people? Have we done anything about stem cell research to help people who are dying and are sick advance their health? No," said Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston. "Have we done anything about the mentally ill, school finance or ethics?

"This is a ridiculous bill ... I don't know how this bill got to the floor. It's stupid."

Good point, but I always thought if the legislature keeps bickering about stupid things, it keeps them distracted from really fucking up something important. But I digress.

But, proponents say they like the measure because it gives parents support in addressing their teenagers' behavior.

What the hell does that mean? Parents have so little control of their daughters that they have to rely on threats from the state to keep them from shaking their ass in public? "Now Katlin, you know mommy loves your half time dance, but don't grind it too much. . . don't want to end up in jail."

But for once, won't somebody please think of the children? The adolescent cheerleader fantasy is as old as puberty itself (ok, maybe not, but play along). Why in the hell do we need the nanny state to poke their nose into a high school pep-rally and tell the cheerleaders to "tone it down?" Don't they realize that there are thousands of geeks in the A/V club with high-power zoom lenses on a high-eight camera that desperately need this exhibition?

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