Disclaimer: Saban Brands owns Power Rangers. Madonna Ciccone (so far as I know) owns "Like a Prayer." This story takes place a few years after Power Rangers Turbo and fudges details a bit. Oh, and this is not politically correct. Everyone from angst-laden feminists to fundamentalists to libertarians gets it here. If you're the type of person who picks his cause and more than merely standing by it, waves his signs and screams out in the streets covered in fake blood and convinces himself that anyone who dares to pose a question or concern must be "bigoted," "immoral," "heartless" or "statist," you will not like this. You have been warned.

Do It All in Public
by MegaSilver

It all started innocently enough… or so it would seem in retrospect.

It was December 1998, and that meant basketball season at Angel Grove High School. Kimberly Hart, a Pan Global gold medalist, was back in town for the year to take care of her father as he recovered from prostate cancer. To keep busy, she had taken a part-time job coaching the high school varsity cheerleading squad and in just a few months had them looking more polished and pretty than they had been in five years.

Tonight was the big night: the first official game of the season against the Stone Canyon Storms. The Angel Grove Angles were well poised for an honorable performance but it would be a close match. Morale would make or break the team.

Kimberly was well aware of this fact when she gave her squad the pre-game pep talk in the girls' locker room. "Okay, ladies, listen up. You're responsible for the morale of those guys, and that means pepping them up and pepping the fans up. I've said this before, but cheerleading is gymnastics and personality: if you get down, everyone gets down, and the team goes down. You are as much a part of that basketball team as the captain. Just remember: none of you are alone in this!"

Suffice to say, this former cheerleader, Power Ranger and competitive gymnast knew what she was talking about.

"So let's go, fight, WIN!" All the girls joined her on the last word.

As the cheerleaders from both sides dashed out onto the court, Kimberly found herself praying they wouldn't stop believing what she had just told them. The cheerleaders from Stone Canyon showed off everything they had at every possible corner, reflecting the upper-income but middle-class attitude stereotypical of their city's predominant demographic. Every bad pompom-girl stereotype could apply to them.

As the second quarter ticked away, things did not look good. The Storms were playing dirty and the referees seemed to care very little. The Angles were holding their own, but just barely, and by four minutes till half time they were down 16 to 10. The Storms' cheerleaders took every opportunity to show off and, whenever the full court was available, to hog as much of the floor as possible so as to diminish their rivals' presence.

Just as Kimberly was about to call the girls in to suggest a routine to get the fans going, the Storm cheerleaders uttered a challenge, perfectly commensurate with their stereotypical attitudes. Positioning themselves in an arrow shape and pointing their pompoms at their opponents, they chanted:

We've got spirit, yes we do!
We've got spirit; how 'bout you?

Kimberly rolled her eyes. She knew this type of spoiled exurban twit all too well: she used to be one. But her parents' divorce, her service on the Power Team, and her participation in the Pan Global Games had swept away the old Kimberly. Now, she reflected on the oddity that for some reason girls of that type seemed to think their behavior attracted boys. (And it does, but usually the wrong kind. The key word, naturally, is boys, not men.) She had heard that jeer before, and she certainly wasn't surprised to hear the Stone Canyon girls acting flippant. What did surprise her was her own squad's quick response:

Chocolate Sundae; banana split
We think your team plays like
Shiiiift to the left! Shiiiift to the right!
Go, team, go! Fight, fight, fight!

Kimberly covered her mouth, appalled. Secretly she wanted to be glad that they had given those brats just the sort of teardown they deserved, but of course she knew how this sort of irreverance reflected on her. But what could she have done? She had never said anything to her girls that would imply that such unsportsmanlike conduct was acceptable, nor had they given her any reason to believe she needed to drive the point home.

Of course, the Storms were not going to let that one go so easily:

That's all right; that's okay!
You're gonna pump our gas someday!

That was even worse, but the Angels would up the ante still further:

That's all right; that's okay!
You boinked 'em all at camp all day!

That was enough. Kimberly marched over to her girls to shut them up before they got kicked out of the game, even as the referee was blowing his whistle and pointing for the teams' respective coaches to get them in line and the Stone Canyon cheerleaders descended to a gangsta level of indecency:

That's okay; that's all right!
You're gonna suck 'em dry all night!

Before the coaches could reach their girls, a spectator from the Angel Grove side launched a cup of Pepsi at the cheer captain from Stone Canyon, only narrowly missing. In response, a Stone Canyon hurled a coconut snow puff somewhere into the crowd, from whence a woman's scream was heard. A few more Angel Grove guys stood up and threw some more items back at their rivals, who retaliated in swift fashion.

Then all hell broke loose.

A stray Caramello bar threw off the balance of the Stone Canyon player who had the ball, and a freshman teammate on the bench retaliated by squirting water at the perpetrator. In defense of his schoolmate, the Angel Grove player who had retrieved the ball hurled it at the little pipsqueak. By now the referee, athletic director and respective coaches were in the middle of the court, blowing the whistles as loud as humanly possible but to no avail. Pandemonium ensued as hardliners continued to throw objects and innocent bystanders—or hit-and-run perpetrators—flocked toward the exit, creating a panicky bottleneck.

HAYMARKET AFFAIR IN HIGH SCHOOL GYM

That was the headline on the front page of the Angel Grove Gazette the next day. (And a full five months until May Day, the intelligent observer would have noted.) Of course it was a monstrous exaggeration – there had been no bombs or serious injuries – , but then again, mainstream journalism has rarely ranked within the "realist" genre of literature.

And knowing it was an exaggeration did not help Kimberly's stomachache as she read the article in the teacher's lounge after school.

Finally she threw the paper aside in disgust. "I just can't believe it got that out of hand so fast! I never once thought that sportsmanship would be a problem for these girls. So, okay, they do something slightly off-color that I didn't expect, but then—"

Ms. Applebee frowned sympathetically. "Kimberly, the girls just don't realize their potential. Words are powerful. They can start wars or build constitutions… or start the mess you saw today. We're all so powerful, you know… but they'll learn in time to express themselves like responsible citizens and harness their potential for the greater good of the community."

Bullshit, Kimberly thought. "It's just… you want to believe they have enough responsibility to go out there and act mature, and then they just prove you wrong."

"Well, Kimberly, you said yourself that you give them autonomy to help them learn. Maybe they just need a little more, you know, to be able to make the right choices. I mean, it's what democracy is all about."

Yeah, let teenagers make all the choices and tear the gym apart again. Kimberly knew exactly what her Irish-born boyfriend would think, and she was thinking it herself: I need a drink.

"Excuse me," she said as she headed out of the lounge to look for a pub.

A strong cosmopolitan from a gentle, non-carding barman certainly helped, but when the buzz cooled and Kimberly had to drive home, the problems were still there. So she made her way back to her father's cozy but tasteful condo, listening to a folk guitar solo CD and bracing herself for what was to follow. Already she had heard rumors of parental fury, not only on the cheerleading team, and she could be sure that she would be one of the targets.

On Channel Seven News, local reporter Sally McBride stood outside the main entrance to Angel Grove High School, where a coalition from NOW and Women to End Domestic Violence was protesting.

"So far these activists have been out here for nearly an hour, apparently upset over the school's official position regarding the events of the now-infamous basketball game last week and demanding changes in the way the situation is covered. This reporter came out here today to find out precisely what, exactly, they think needs to be clarified." She walked over to a pretty Japanese-American lady in the front. "Miss, if you could enlighten us, what exactly is this group's point of contention?"

The lady definitely had an earful. "The school board treated the whole situation as though it were the fault of the cheerleading squads! Those boys were playing dirty and now the girls are being attacked for standing up for their respective teams? It was the men who provoked this and they should be held fully accountable for their actions!"

Further down the line, an older blonde woman looked as though she was about to cry. "There they were, those Stone Canyon girls just doing their job and whatever insults they shouted were directed at the other cheerleaders, not at those delinquent testosterone-crazy boys in the stands! Throwing that beverage was completely unnecessary. If he thinks he can silence women with a few soft drinks, I've news for him!"

A young woman with closely cropped brown hair and bug-eyed spectacles spat out, "Yo, I got somethin' for you, Kimberly Hart! You think those boys just threw those objects 'cuz of pride for their school? Huh-uh! They were doin' what men always do to women. And you and every other crazy *BLEEP* who put dem girls in those there miniskirts ought to go to prison right with the sexual harrassers!"

"Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Sally McBride, reporting for Seven News at Angel Grove High School."

Inside, Principal Caplan was receiving an earful from a rather different type.

"Mr. Caplan, I cannot believe this school thinks that sex and bad sportsmanship are appropriate topics for game cheers! What's next? A strip show at half time?"

"Madame, what do you expect me to do? How am I supposed to control 3,000 rowdy teenagers?"

"You're the principal! It's your job!" The woman leaned back and huffed. "But I guess that's what happens when you take prayer out of public schools!"

"Madame, this school was never a bastion of Christian morality," Mr. Caplan explained coolly. "And if I may say so, you of all people ought to be well aware of that."

"So? Am I to just sit around and watch as you corrupt my son and pay you to do it? Mr. Caplan, would you suffer this for your own children?"

"Of course not! In fact, I didn't suffer them this school at all."

"What?"

"That's right. They went to private school. Do you take me for a fool? Would I let them grow up around these unwashed miscreants?"

The lady appeared shocked. "And so you think that you can just ignore that public morals are going straight downhill—beginning with our young people in your school—because your own children didn't have to see it?"

"Madame, you greatly overestimate my ability to do anything about the situation. But if you insist, let me point out that that you had this coming. You sent your son to this school, knowing full well of the drugs, the Playboy and Penthouse culture, the sex-ed classes, the godless materialism you supposedly loathe so much, and you're upset because of a few swear words uttered in the gym in his third year of all this?"

"You're unbelievable," the woman fumed, getting up to leave. "I'll take this as far as I have to so that you pay! I warn you: repent now!"

"Good luck! And I'll make sure they fine you for sending your kid to this hellhole!" Mr. Caplan shouted after her.

On Saturday, Kimberly had lunch with a few of her old friends, but she wasn't nearly as talkative as she usually was. The hate mail from parents had begun to arrive in her box, and already one death threat had prompted her to call for extra security for her father at the hospital.

"Seriously, I would be on a plane like, right away back to Florida if it weren't for my father being sick," Kimberly groaned.

"Kim, it happens," Adam reassured her. "There was nothing you could do. Things just get out of hand sometimes."

Kimberly sighed. "I fought for two and a half years trying to keep this world safe. I did it all the while thinking that if I did my part in defending them, ordinary people would do their part in leading better lives. But the older I get and the more I see, the more they just completely screw everything up!"

"Chin up, Kim." Jason patted her on the back. "There's got to be something worthwhile in us, or we wouldn't have lasted this long."

"You know," said Rocky, "all this is really an insurrection."

Kimberly looked puzzled. "Of what? By whom?"

"The people. The people are upset because what they really want is to get back control of their lives from the Leviathan state. It's not you they hate, Kim; it's the school, and they hate the school because it's an element of the state. Think about it! It's completely contrary to the state of nature."

Adam gave his friend a worried look. "Man, are you okay?"

"No, seriously! I've been reading Ayn Rand lately. The problem is the state, driving everyone towards totalitarianism and socialism. Get rid of the state, you get rid of the problem! And you start by eliminating it's biggest propaganda tool: the public education system."

Tanya also looked disconcerted. "Okay… and what do you do about education?"

"Private schools! Studies show they're much more effective."

"And what about people who can't afford them?"

"Supply and demand, my friend. Once the supply of public education is gone, the teachers will flock to newly-founded private schools to fill their place, bringing up supply and easing pressure on the price. And then we cut taxes so that the money paid for school tax goes to paying for tuition."

"And if they don't pay?" Kimberly looked especially skeptical.

"They will. People have their own interests at hand, and they will advance the common interest once it becomes clear that their interests always coincide with others'. It's The Virtue of Selfishness."

"So what if some people cheat?"

"They won't! It's harder to cheat when you don't have a public commons to graze on. Just divide up the commons and give people complete autonomy and they'll be perfect!"

Kimberly just shook her head and shoved her fork into the pasta salad on her plate. Down inside she felt Rocky just had to be wrong, but she simply had neither the stamina nor the knowhow to argue this one.

"And so, ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion, I think the evidence clearly speaks for itself: the public educational system in Angel Grove, as elsewhere, is grossly inefficient and low-quality in comparison to private and parochial schools in the city. I therefore conclude that public education is a farce and should be abolished so as to avoid continuing what amounts to the legal theft of hundreds of dollars per year from the citizens, most of whom do not even use the public schools but for a portion of their lives here." Having finished his speech, Rocky stood back from his massive statistical and logical charts that encompassed his argument and awaited the response.

The ladies and gentlemen of the Angel Grove School Board looked decidedly underwhelmed, and nobody said anything for a moment. Finally, the president cleared his throat. "If… no one has any response to Mr. DeSantos' analysis—"

A board member stood up, an aging blonde lady—in fact, the same one whom we have witnessed protesting the silencing of her sex vis-à-vis Pepsi-Cola. Again she looked as though she might cry, or scream, or pounce on Rocky to rip his throat out. "I cannot believe that some crazed patriarchic deconstructivist would even be taken seriously in this free and democratic society! What is this, a forum for neo-Social Darwinism? That the board would even welcome into its presence someone whose very raison d'être is to abolish our entire existence? This is unbelievable! It should be self-evident that education is an essential component of any successful free society. You are subversive and harmful, and if I have my way, the children of this community will never be exposed to such poisonous views!"

Another woman, around the same age but brunette and somewhat more dynamic-looking, stood up and looked Rocky straight in the eye. "Mr. DeSantos, while I cannot endorse the views of my fellow board member, neither can I see eye-to-eye with your blatantly non-sequitur argument. The efficiency of the school system and the justification for its existence are, frankly, two entirely separate issues. Moreover, you neglect to consider the fact that with a public school system, there is at least the remote possibility of some measure of consistency; at least we know our children are getting schooling."

"Miss, let me ask just how far you wish to take that?" retorted Rocky. "During the invasions a few years back, would you have supported replacement of the Power Rangers—who generally did well but on occasion were late to the game—with a much less effective militia that the government would have promised to back consistently?"

"That is completely irrelevant!"

"Oh, I think not."

"All right," interjected the president. "With all due respect it is time for us to move on. I am fairly sure no one will object if we do not motion to the previous question on this issue, so we'll thank Mr. DeSantos for his time and be done with this."

Two days later the streets of Angel Grove erupted in parades. Taking that city on that day as a cross-section of America, one might well have concluded that the Libertarian Party was a force to be reckoned with. But then, prominent academics of a libertarian bent had come from all across the country to campaign for Rocky's referendum to abolish public education. The former Red/Blue Ranger had been quite tenacious in getting out petitions and enlisting support to hold a ballot on the issue.

But libertarians were not the only ones out there. Although most of them sent their kids to public schools, more than a few Christian evangelicals actually supported the referendum, hoping that the abolition would send a message to the state and the teachers' union as a warning that their jobs were in jeopardy if they continued their "misrule of terror."

Still, opposition to the referendum was considered "mainline" opinion, touted by the Angel Grove Gazette and most surrounding newspapers in central California. In spite of Evangelicals' attempts to paint opponents as hippies, feminists and libertines, and in spite of vicious accusations of communism by libertarians, the most important opposition, numerically speaking, did not come from dedicated social activists. Ironically, the city's large ethnic European Catholic enclaves, from which very few campaigners were drawn, voted almost eighty percent no, in spite of the fact that around seventy percent of Angel Grove's Catholics sent their children to private schools, and without them the referendum may well have eeked through.

They were, of course, punished accordingly by the proponents of abolition. Several articles in libertarian journals commented on "fascistic, statist" tendencies of European Catholicism, noting that they were likely to be pro-labor or pro-state on economic issues but conservative when it came to cultural and moral issues. Evangelicals concluded that it was further evidence that Catholics, unable to translate their conservative bent into "good" voting habits, were not really Christians at all. Meanwhile, left-libertine and socialist editorialists at the Gazette and other papers did not lift a finger to defend those who had voted with them on the referendum.

Yet as she sat with her friends at the bar, listening to an ever-less-sober Rocky DeSantos ramble on painfully about "money and the ethnic vote," Kimberly reflected on the fact that this was the first time since she had begun dating an Irishman that she had noticed the Catholic communities in Angel Grove. Her family was Catholic on both sides—French-Canadian on her mother's and Bavarian on her father's—but she had barely gone to Mass since her parents' divorce and, being newcomers, they had never quite fit in with the tight-knight Italian, Croatian, and Irish parishes in Angel Grove. (Rocky's family was Catholic and Hispanic, albeit Argentinean—not an ethnicity strongly represented in Angel Grove.) Only periodically had she thought of their existence, and only now did she even consider their possible significance.

She didn't quite know enough to explain why, but she sensed something different about them, something firmly rooted and remarkably elastic. She was coming close to finding the reasons why they were so segregated and even why they had voted so oddly, reasons largely missed by the mainstream press.

So close, and yet so far.

Only a few sophisticated journals really picked up on the phenomenon of the quasi-mafia that had long dominated City Hall politics. Mayor Karen Itzkovic, the daughter of immigrants from the former Yugoslav Socialist Republic, was a Democrat and staunchly opposed even to holding the referendum, but she was hardly an ideological "leftist." Although she had been mayor for only five years, she was part of a longstanding political machine that was kept alive through an elaborate system of ward patronage and campaigning that had, to its credit, kept the city's flavorful ethnic neighborhoods and manufacturing economy alive even through the turbulent sixties and seventies but had riddled her party and the general political atmosphere of Angel Grove City Hall with corruption and greed.

Thus did the powerful voting bloc of ethnic Croatian, Italian, and a few but notable Irish Catholics—those who would arguably have benefited most from the referendum—come out in staunch support of their beloved mayor's position. The contributions of Itzkovic and her predecessors far outweighed a few hundred dollars a year in property taxes that the ward bosses convinced them the increasingly spendthrifty California legislature probably would have seized anyway.

*Epilogue*

Kimberly did become quite fond of Rocky throughout and after that incident. In the midst of all the referendum chaos everyone managed to forget the incident that had sparked it all off. In fact, by the time she got on her plane back to Fort Lauderdale at the end of February, not one person outside her close circle had even mentioned the cheerleading disaster to her since the voting day.

So fickle, the body politic.

(Likewise, so quickly do individuals' obsessions shift, as we shall see…)

So weird, Kimberly thought as the plane ascended, coming back after all this time, staying four months…

… and now, going back to her new life in Florida.

But it wasn't really new anymore, was it?

Was she just "going back" and things would be as they were last fall? Or had Angel Grove changed her this time the way Florida had changed her, irrevocably, throughout 1996?

She hadn't met anyone else on the trip back—not that she had intended to—and Brendan O'Driscoll, her boyfriend of two years, hadn't sent anything like a "Dear Jane" letter, so maybe it wasn't quite the same rupture. Probably not, actually.

Still, she couldn't help but wonder. Brendan hadn't followed her to Angel Grove, hadn't visited, even, but she knew money was tight these days with him working only half-shifts at the bar trying to get his Bachelor of Business Administration under the belt once and for all.

Kimberly's thoughts wandered to Tommy, who had followed Katherine to England in October of 1997 and held out until April of the next year, when he'd returned to his roots in Los Angeles, driving racecars yet again. She had only seen him once on her trip. Apparently he and Katherine were still technically together, but the long distance was taking a toll on their relationship.

Would Tommy have followed me to Florida after graduation if we hadn't broken up? Would he have held out, or gone right back?

Well, Florida wasn't England, but it would likely have ended his racing career in any event.

Kimberly sighed and shoved that thought spiraling down the cavern of might-have-beens. She was with Brendan now.

If I'd stayed longer in Angel Grove, would he have followed?

Another might-have-been. Kimberly tried to discard that question, too. But then, she began to wonder…

Are we going to make it?

She thought of Tommy and Katherine together in London. She assumed they'd lived together. Kimberly felt she would be a bit forward if she brought up the idea of getting an apartment together, and she knew Brendan wouldn't bring up the subject: too Catholic to let himself think about it. On a good day she found Brendan's piety cute; on other days, she found him cloying and masochistic. But still a good boy.

Not living together… well, is that a bad thing?

In the abstract, maybe not. Now that she thought about it, Kimberly had always tacitly assumed she would never live with a man until her wedding night. But in the thick of Brendan's studies and with Kimberly still training—and studying a bit—marriage just seemed so far off!

Of course, if she moved in with Brendan, it would mean a decimation of her financial resources, the total wrath of her parents (her mother's remarriage notwithstanding) and probably grandparents—

Suddenly, unpleasant visions of the December incident flashed in Kimberly's mind. Ugh. Sex, politics, religion… all mixed together. It hadn't gone down well the first time, and she was not in the mood to swallow the mix now. So she put on her headphones and plugged in to the airplane's music channels.

… When you call my name, it's like a little prayer
I'm down on my knees; I wanna take you there!

Immediately Kimberly yanked the headphones out. She'd seen that music video. And more then ever before she understood it was exactly the ugly mix she had just been trying to get away from.

A pretty, mulatto-looking stewardess approached Kimberly with a drink cart. "Something to drink?"

Kimberly's eyes went wide. "Gin and tonic. Extra strong," she added, so happy to be twenty-one at last.

Well, I guess any mix will do, after all. So long as the alcohol dominates.

THE END