Three members of the Carroll High School (Carroll, Iowa) football team could be suspended for displaying “obscene hand gestures” during a team photo for the local paper:
The photo, taken by the Carroll Daily Times Herald, appeared Monday in the newspaper’s fall sports preview section. The newspaper “blurred” four players in the photo, three of whom were making similar hand gestures and a fourth whom the newspaper judged not to be acting in a “respectable manner.” The fourth player was not suspended from playing.
Oooooooooooooooooh! I wonder what the gesture was!!!!!!!!!
Was it the middle finger?
Was it the one-handed “blah-blah” sign?
Was it the Clinton Thumb?
As you probably guessed from the headline, it was none of the above. The offending gesture was, of course, The Shocker.
More after the jump.
The Shocker has its roots in frat-boy clowning about depraved sexual activity, but has come to be so ubiquitous that its original meaning has been diluted somewhat. Of course the proud schoolmarms of Carroll don’t see it that way, so they went and suspended the little punkasses one game. Their parents, as predictable as their kids are idiotic, are furious:
Mike Bach, the father of one of the suspended players, said he was informed by a school administrator on Monday that the three boys would miss one game. Bach was the school’s booster club president before resigning Monday night, citing his disappointment in the way the school handled the situation.
Bach contended that the hand gesture the boys made is not obscene and has been commonly displayed by athletes in other sports at the school, as well as by widely known college athletes.
The gesture had become so accepted at the school, Bach said, that a varsity head coach at Carroll High used a picture of a player showing the gesture as a screen saver on his school computer.
For the record, I would have suspended the little deviants for going back in time to 1999 for their ideas on humor, but that and my firmly pro-monkey ancestor stance is why I’m not on the Carroll School Board.
The Shocker in theory
The Shocker in practice
Added: An astute reader points out that Carroll High School is actually in Carroll, Iowa, and not Omaha. The story was reported in the Omaha World-Leader, but took place in Iowa. Why the World-Leader figured it was better not to report where the high school was remains a mystery…
Prep Football: Photo raises a furor in Carroll [Omaha World-Leader]
