Columnist complains about grinding and freak dancing

Teen dances are turning into sex shows, according to syndicated columnist Brent Bozell:

The freak-dancing wars are a symptom of a larger disease. In too many schools, parents and principals and chaperones are letting the inmates run the asylum. What should be a strict, clean, carefully observed behavior code is being challenged and ultimately rejected by students -- spoiled punks -- emboldened enough to defy and intimidate the adults who would enforce those codes. What's left is a tacky event where teenagers dress in expensive tuxedos and gowns and dance like they weren't wearing any clothes at all.

On the website Slate a few years ago, twentysomething author David Amsden attended a prom in Rockville, Md., as a journalist to observe the modern customs. It wasn't pretty. "Most, however, are dancing in a style you could call Rap Video Imitation Gone Wrong: the girls back into the boys, who proceed to lift up the girls' dresses in a way they apparently think is subtle, but in reality is anything but. Then they try, and fail, to move to the beat." One girl's dress was hiked up so far the author could see her bellybutton ring.

Bozell concludes by writing the following passage:

I simply refuse to believe that a school principal cannot issue a mandate -- yes, a mandate -- declaring that any student participating in this kind of behavior would summarily be dismissed from school. Period. Ah, but you can hear the Wobble-Knees already. What, specifically, is this kind of behavior? How do we distinguish between sexy dancing and sexual dancing? How do we know it's indecent, never mind obscene? Are there regulations banning it? If not, who are we to impose our morality on others? The hand-wringing would be endless -- embarrassingly, nauseatingly endless.

And you parents out there who condone this activity: You disgust me. If I were chaperoning one of these dances and a boy attempted to perform this kind of lewd activity on my teenage daughter, I'd have a solution. I wouldn't ask him please not to simulate anal sex on her. I wouldn't refer him to the contract he signed at school. I'd beat the stuffing out of him.