One of the most disgusting trends in recent years is the pervasive erosion of common decency and dignity in American culture.
In the latest salvo, a former NFL player brought a stripper to a suburban Detroit high school, where she twerked to the lyrics, “Twerk that p****, baby,” and writhed against a shirtless rapper.
The incident occurred Saturday in the gymnasium of Mount Clemens High School, according to WJBK-TV in Michigan.
The report said it was a charity event — “Peezy’s Sweetie’s Day Bash” — hosted by a low-level minor-league football organization helmed by Quentin Hines, a former running back for the New England Patriots and CEO of the Rivals Professional Football League.
WJBK reported the event was not sponsored by Mount Clemens High School and no students were in attendance, but numerous young people can be seen watching the performance in the video.
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“A portion of the event was recorded and uploaded to Facebook, showing a shirtless man rapping while a woman, wearing barely any clothes at all, twerks in the middle of the basketball floor on top of the school’s Battling Bathers logo,” the outlet reported.
After the viral video was brought to the attention of school Superintendent Monique Beels, she banned the Rivals Professional Football League from using school facilities in the future.
“The Mount Clemens Community Schools’ Board of Education and Administration are deeply shocked, disappointed, and disgusted by the inappropriate events that took place last night,” Beels said in a statement Sunday.
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“Our facilities were rented to Rivals Recruiting Worldwide in good faith and trust was broken,” she said. “This type of behavior is not tolerated in our district. The safety of our students and staff are at the forefront of our priorities.”
Hines — a former Akron running back who was signed by the Patriots in 2013 but never carried the ball in an NFL game — said his group had rented out the school’s gym about 100 times during the past 10 years without incident, according to WJBK.
He said he was not aware that the woman his organization had hired was a stripper.
“I don’t think she was a stripper. She was one of her dancers that was underdressed, and it’s unfortunate,” Hines said. “I did not know that someone would come that underdressed to dance with him.”
However, he said the show will go — just not at the high school.
“Rivals Recording Worldwide we are very sorry, but we are still going to be a platform for up-and-coming artists,” he said.
The exact details of this particular incident are irrelevant. What is shocking and disturbing is the widescale elevation of strippers and porn stars in pop culture today.
Two salient examples are sex-tape maven Kim Kardashian and stripper-turned-rapper Cardi B.
Cardi B and Kardashian are extremely popular — especially among young women — and have a combined 474 million followers on Instagram.
By comparison, the sitting U.S. president, Joe Biden, and former President Barack Obama have a combined 54 million followers.
Obviously, social media is not the only metric for gauging popularity, but it is a strong indicator of influence among young people.
You’re not a prude for wanting women to be valued for something other than stripping and twerking.
What’s even odder is that so-called feminists see no incongruity in our society elevating women — or men pretending to be women — who promote themselves primarily as sex objects.
Once upon a time, the goal of the women’s rights movement was to elevate womanhood. Today, it seems to be a race to the bottom to cheapen and debase it.