I’m not sure to which "it" you refer, but since this is about the great state of Texas, I have a guess.

This is a tragedy. Whatever happened to "limited government"? Never have those two words been needed more than now.

Why can’t the schools be contacted and asked nicely to have their students stop with the "sexually suggestive" routines? What ever happened to that sort of responsibility? Why does the government have to act as "parent" to the students? Sheesh. How idiotic.

If Football is akin to war then cheerleaders to a football team are as the women of Sparta to the Spartan warrior. Since the weather in Texas is usually hot at least up until November, it should be possible for them to run around naked with spears.

and who defines "sexually suggestive"?

Apparently some prude!!!!!!!

Given the depths to which today’s culture has sunk, it could be argued that even sexually suggestive cheerleaders, if clothed, are wholesome and healthy by comparison.

However, with high schools and public universities, the state has every right to enact a decency statute. 16-year-olds are girls, not "women." And if we are talking reality, not theory, the same can be said of 21-year-old college students. In addition, at the college level, one is admittedly dealing with legal adults for the most part. However, the state has the right to insist that its public universities not blatantly contradict certain moral standards in their public exhibitions. Universities are not profit-making institutions, nor do they exist solely for the purpose of "training" and "free inquiry." They have fundamental civilizational responsibilities. Just because they perform those responsibilities badly in this day and age does not mean that all attempts to restore and honor such a concept of the university are wrong.

Spartan women also fullfilled fundamental civilizational responsibilities...

Of course if you want to be serious about it, I agree with David, especially given the question of age. There are also some very good cheerleading squads who compete and do some very good gymnastics, there are also some very good bands, but at least half the cheerleading squads and bands are an embarrasment, and one feels bad when they break into cheer with the team down 40 points...in fact at some games it is so bad that you get the feeling that there is no connection between the cheerleaders the band or the football team. So in reality you would often times lose nothing by eliminating the distraction. Unless the crowd, band, cheerleaders and football team work in unison, the only thing worth keeping is the essentials...if the football team is that bad comparatively then the band or the cheerleaders should compete in a pure competition venue and not as a side show.

Since it is an issue for the Texans, I would refference the ammusing King of the Hill episode where Peggy Hill takes over the coaching of the cheerleading squad and this in turn motivates the football team to a complete turn around. Unfortunately certain groups become offended by her antics, her school is sued for hate speech, she is fired, and the team resumes its loosing ways.

In my way of thinking friday night is about Football, Football is a conglomeration of things potentialy offensive to some...and if you don’t like it stay home, and if you don’t like football or watch it don’t pontificate on it, and above all don’t bring the law into it...please?

Texas has the greatest high school football in the nation, lets be conservatives on this issue and not fix what works. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and if it be broke then rub some dirt on it.

To put it intellectually, Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the end of history because he said that Liberal Democracy allows outlets for both megalothymia and isothymia. Football is the domain of megalothymia, and cheerleading done right is part of football.

Efforts to regulate cheerleading represent a constitutional violation of football’s inherent megalothymia, by the ugly step sister isothymia.

To translate into simpler english...Fukuyama says that thymos is the driving force of western civilization, this means the desire to be recognized. Megalothymia is the desire to be recognized as victor, or as better than others. Isothymia is the desire to be recognized as equal to others. If all cheerleaders are more restricted in uniforms and stunts, then at least from a distance both squads and those within them appear more equal, perhaps there is less to go by, and perhaps then people don’t get killed over who makes the cheerleading team (this has sadly enough happened in Texas). So then it seems that Isothymia is very good right? Well, that depends on whether or not you think there is a thymotic imbalance. I am afraid that I will feel like the last man even when I return to the refuge that is football. Football shouldn’t be messed with because it is a constitutionally(for liberal democracy) necessary outlet for Megalothymia. In addition to this certain states seem to need these outlets more than others, if this was happening in Rhode Island I wouldn’t say anything. But this is Texas we are talking about, the state itself could be considered an outlet for Megalothymia. Everything is bigger in Texas...and that is how it should stay.

I also realize that many people hungering to point to what is bad with society talk about the number of breast implants among teenagers in Texas...Britney Spears et al, I also remmember how Bob Dole was attacked for his pepsi commercial, but far from cheapening himself as a statesman it let us know that he was done playing politics and was back to being human. That if being a statesman or a philosopher ment you couldn’t be a man then so much the worse for the latter. If these isothymic culture wars aren’t carefull, I believe we are in deep shit. I believe that Dr. Schramm glorifies smokes not because they are good for you scientifically, but because putting smoke into his chest keeps it from feeling hollow. The backlash against fast food has added to the popularity of eating competitions... some people get breast implants from an isothymic desire... and society accepts this because a woman who has breast cancer should be granted a means of looking into a mirror without crying. Yet society frowns upon the teenager who does the same because she is either alienated or seeks to alienate herself from the pack by standing out. She suffers from the persuit of Megalothymia. And people blame capitalism, consumerism and high school cheerleading.

A child prodigy commits suicide no doubt because all his megalothymic outlets were bent to isothymic passions. Was he living for himself, did he know that it was moral to do so? Or did he believe that with great ability comes greater responsibility to any person with a need? Oh, how often must he have felt that strain...Did no one find it odd that his career of choice was as an anesthesioligist...someone who removes the pain of those "most in need"; those undergoing life saving opperations. Yet the better he did the more he was placed above others, such that he felt he was an endangered species. After reading the latter books of Harry Potter, where Harry gets rebuked for his pride, and his selfish desire of wanting a familly...must he not have felt the same terrible rebuke for whatever selfish desires he harbored? Didn’t he simply realize that the only way to allow others to feel isothymic, the only way to keep others from feeling bad about themselves...to save others in the world from the worst feeling, that of not being equal, to save people from the vice of jealousy...The only way to fullfill the requisite sainthood that such ability demanded was to eliminate his own kind.

With all the contradictions that it entails, he died the patron saint of isothymic anesthesiology.