I’ve always thought that our media and entertainment elite need to get out more. Case in point (and a hat tip to InkWell reader K.C.): Whoopi Goldberg. Whoopi’s got a new TV show starting April 9 on Nickodeon, in which Whoopi plays coach to a girls’ soccer team. The idea of “Just for Kicks” is somehow to persuade girls to play soccer:
“‘We’re not used to seeing girls play sports. ‘If they’re ice-skating? Maybe. If they’re doing gymnastics? Possibly. But soccer?’
“‘What I wanted to explore,’ said Goldberg, ‘is how do we, on a one-on-one basis, treat the girls that are playing sports? How do we look at them? Do we say, Oh, she’s butch?” And for the girls, do they feel that, “Oh, I have to pretend to be not as good when I’m playing soccer with a boy I like?”‘”
And here’s the plot:
“In the first episode, Alexa (Francesca Catalano) must convince her cheerleading teammates that soccer isn’t nerdy or butch, but cool.”
Huh? As K.C. points out, hasn’t Goldberg ever heard of Mia Hamm? Or the day that Brandi Chastain tore off her T-shirt to reveal her sports bra and every man in America (including my husband) went: “Whoo-hoo!”?
Myself, I don’t think Whoopi Goldberg is a suitable role-model for children. She’s the one who got bounced from being spokeswoman for Slim-Fast for her off-color conduct at an anti-Bush, pro-Kerry/Edwards rally in 2004:
“At one point in a speech mocking the Bush administration, Goldberg used his surname as a sexual reference.”
Do you want your pre-teen daughters watching that sort of thing?