by Jack Cashill, ©1999
News Talk 980 KMBZ
Posted on Cashill Newsletter
July 13, 1999*

The whole thing was creepy. There was President William Jefferson Clinton with Mia Hamm's husband, Christian Correy, cheering on the women's soccer team. Mia Hamm, as the world now knows, is a very attractive and prolific scorer on the soccer field. And as the world already knew, President Clinton is a prolific scorer most everywhere else.

For the record, the trend towards big time female soccer kicked off quietly in 1972 when Congress passed a seemingly innocuous batch of education amendments. Although one of the amendments would emerge as the Magna Carta of women's sports, it was so slight and subtle at birth that it didn't even get a name. Congress simply called it "Title IX. "

Never an institution to be troubled by the mindless mischief of federal intervention, The Kansas City Star has praised Title IX as though it were The Emancipation Proclamation. "It righted a century of wrongs," wrote The Star's reporters. "It allowed intelligence to reign over traditions."

Never mind that in states like Iowa girls' basketball was the tradition or that women have been playing sports in schools for more than a century, The Star reporters convinced themselves that Title IX had opened "doors that had previously been nailed shut."

Curiously, at the time of passage, no one anticipated that Title IX would rip the doors off anything, let alone college sports. And for good reason. Title IX wasn't about sports. I repeat--Title IX wasn't about sports. Incredibly, while this amendment was being debated, the subject of sports never even came up.

Nor, as some might think, did Title IX authorize bean-counting by sex. In fact, its sponsors thought they were authorizing just the opposite. "Gender quotas were exactly what this amendment intends to prohibit," said Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana. "The thrust of this amendment is to do away with every quota." The reversal here is mind-boggling. It's as if in the Emancipation Proclamation Abraham Lincoln promised the South that slavery would never die or if Thomas Jefferson dedicated the Declaration of Independence to George III and swore in it his undying fealty to the crown.

But America didn't have subversive bureaucrats back in Lincoln's days or activist judges. Honest Abe had to actually say what he meant--maybe that's how he got the nickname. But Bill Clinton, need I say it, ain't no honest Abe.

Still, he was exactly the right president to be sitting there, leering, calculating, counting would be votes among the soccer moms and dads. The only thing real about the game was the girls' good effort and good play. The event itself was as fraudulent as the president who presided. The sport is dull and alien. Left to their own devices, without prodding and subsidization, few girls would play it--if any. Indeed, drive around town even in the wake of the triumph and see how many girls you see out kicking soccer balls.

What the game represented was the triumph of the liberal elite: of judges who delight in rewriting laws, of network honchos eager to highlight girls who look like their daughters, of soccer moms who choose not to know anything bad about their president, and of a president who champions women when he's not assaulting them.

As to the young women work their way through college and who actually go there to study, keep bussing those tables, girls.

*And for some vintage material from 1999:

" Jack Cashill co-hosts "Talk Back with Mary (O'Halloran) and Jack" on News Radio 980 KMBZ 9-11 AM. Jack occupies the chair Rush Limbaugh previously [occupied] while in Kansas City.

Jack is a public speaker, author, political consultant, creative director for tv and radio campaigns and an Emmy Award video producer.

You can reach Jack Cashill at Cashill Marketing & Communications . . ."