But if the photo spread only contains “artistic” and “tasteful” pictures and if they don’t look “sleazy” or “cheap”, then what would be wrong with little kids looking at it?
 

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The Pistons cannot have it both ways.

They are trying to maintain their family audience while simultaneously trying to hawk their cheerleaders in skimpy bikinis. But the worst part of the hypocrisy is the audacity of insisting that the calendar is wholesome even though the team’s store has restricted its sale from minors.

It is a bad move for the Pistons as well as for the NBA if this practice does spread to other teams. Professional basketball is a family event and all of its functions and promotional items are open to people of any age and of any ideological spectrum. This neutrality and family environment is what helps make professional sports so popular among a huge fan base. The moment that families begin to feel that basketball has become an adult centered venue, like wrestling, then that audience becomes limited.

Targeting a segment of the market that is “interested” in steamy women wearing tiny swimsuits diminishes the family appeal of the NBA.

But more to the point, the clientele who wants to see such girls is actually smaller than what people really think it is.

For example, foul mouth comedians such as Eddie Murphy quickly discovered that raunchy movies do not generate anywhere close to the kind of big bucks that family movies make. In the movie Raw, Eddie Murphy profanely lampooned Bill Cosby for his family genre of entertainment. Today, the only big money Eddie Murphy makes comes directly from family movies. And Hollywood has begun to realize this too trend too by trying to appeal to broader family-based audiences.

In the addition, the sporting venues that feature scantily clad women are also the ones that nobody takes seriously such as wrestling. Wrestling does have a following but it is nothing more than a niche market unlike real professional sports.

In all fairness, the NBA has already taken numerous steps to avoid the image and fate of the NFL. For years, professional football had too many spoiled athletes who acted more like thugs, druggies, or pimps. As a result, it didn’t take too much more of that kind of atmosphere to help further a decline of a viewing audience.

And to tip my hat, I am not a puritanical conservative.

Unlike prudish conservatives, I actually don’t mind cheerleaders and dance teams as long as it is done tastefully and is available for all audiences to enjoy.

As a kid, I grew up during the glory days of Roger Staubach and Danny White of the Dallas Cowboys. Living in south Texas, I remember being in grade school where lots of little girls wanted to be Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. I never saw that as being exploitive and even today, I don’t see dance teams and cheerleaders as being negative.

In addition, I feel that the Michigan-based American Decency Association, the organization that started the protest of the Piston’s dance team, made several crucial mistakes that could alienate people from taking their protest seriously.

They have branded the swimsuit calendar as “pornography” and as “prostitution.” They made the right move to protest but they used the wrong approach.

First, many right-wing organizations do not have a good grasp of the media (other than to say that the press is against them). As a result, when they engage in inflammatory and inaccurate descriptions, the media is more than happy to oblige in publishing their statements.

The press doesn’t care about reporting with proper perspective or about facts. Instead, the media loves extremes and they love portraying people or organizations as extremists. And the right-wingers just go ahead and make that possible.

Pushing the “fire and brimstone” panic button may rev up their base but it doesn’t succeed in persuading the secular segment of society. This segment already knows what hard core pornography looks like and this calendar isn’t it. And they also know what prostitution is and again, this isn’t it. All that this incendiary hysteria does is make such organizations look like they have either gone overboard or are nothing more than publicity hounds.

Instead, this subject could have been approached with common sense. Just as any organization must wisely pick its battles, it must also pick its words or an irresponsible media is going to pick it apart. Reasonable and sensible arguments like this can be made:

• Professional sports already has a huge family based audience with plenty of children involved so why try to market material that is not available to kids?
• Promotional material that only targets people who are interested in bikini clad cheerleaders represent a fraction of the size of the huge family based audience. So why run the risk of potentially ruining a good thing?
• Current promotional material of dance teams is already successful so why is there a need to target people who are only interested in bikini clad cheerleaders?
• The only sporting venues that have scantily clad women are the ones, like wrestling, that nobody takes seriously.

Many more common sense arguments can be made from the same nugget of truth instead of resorting to calling the calendar such things as pornography and prostitution. And common sense is what will appeal to the public at large instead of fire and brimstone.

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