Several conservatives, news organizations and right-wing social media accounts are fighting a culture war over videos of sororities — typically majority white — doing choreographed dances for sorority rush week. But there’s one problem: There’s been no evidence of recent widespread backlash or public discourse over the videos this month. In other words… “no one cares,” as one expert in American studies says.
In a recent segment of “Finnerty” on Newsmax, host Rob Finnerty spent some time discussing a part of the sorority recruitment process, referred to as rush, as videos of female college students dancing together played on-air. Finnerty called rush “one of the great American traditions for female college students.”
“It should be OK to celebrate things that are uniquely American,” he said. “But over the past several years we haven’t done that, we’ve been scared. Scared of the backlash, scared of who we might offend, we’ve been told that what you’re seeing here is wrong.
“We were told there wasn’t enough diversity in all these videos. But all that is changing, and it’s changing because of what happened in November,” he said, referencing President Donald Trump’s presidential election.
“You can’t watch these videos without smiling,” he later continued. “And maybe wishing that you were in college. Maybe wishing that this could be you again. And that should be OK.”
Finnerty then bemoaned that the country has seen “four years of [Joe] Biden and DEI, and tremendous reverse discrimination, especially against white people — especially against white men.”
“Fun is back,” he said, before adding, “America is healing by being America again.”
Finnerty faced backlash after a clip of his on-air remarks made rounds on X. Several people pointed out that his rant on the conservative TV channel fell flat, since the supposed outrage over the sorority videos seemed manufactured — especially since sorority rush videos have been going viral on TikTok for years. Other X users thought his speech celebrating college girls dancing came off as “creepy.”
But Finnerty isn’t the only talking head who’s made an issue of these sorority rush videos in recent weeks. Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly recently celebrated the “amazing” videos on her podcast, “The Megyn Kelly Show,” saying: “Young women of America are happy to lean back into being hot and together and free and unmasked in every way.”
On Sunday, the official X account for Fox News tweeted a dancing sorority video, claiming that the viral clips are “making waves once more, with some calling it proof that ‘America is back,’ describing sorority girls as ‘warriors on the frontline of TikTok’ pushing back on lockdown-era culture and showing renewed Gen Z patriotism.”
Conservative radio host Jesse Kelly wrote on X last week that the “sorority dance videos are just another sign that we’re in the midst of a backlash against the ugly communists who ruled us for a short time.”
And elsewhere on X, there are countless posts claiming that the sorority rush videos are causing a “liberal backlash,” or a liberal “meltdown.” Other social media users are echoing Finnerty’s message, saying the videos are a sign that “America is back” and that the country is “healing.”
While, for years, there’s been many discussions and criticisms about the lack of diversity on display in these yearly overwhelmingly white sorority rush videos, among other criticisms about the campus culture at some of these schools, many people on social media are not buying the claims that there’s been recent waves of so-called liberal meltdowns over these videos.
“Manufactured outrage!! NOBODY gives a crap about any of this. But fox and media will sell the shit out of it and you will swallow it,” one X user wrote.
“It’s so weird that they keep saying we are outraged about shit that we are not outraged about,” wrote another.
“What does any of this have to do with conservatism?” another X user questioned.
Kari J. Winter, a professor of American studies at the University at Buffalo whose expertise includes gender, feminism, race and class, told HuffPost that Finnerty and “other MAGA folks are obviously trying to emotionally charge a trivial non-issue in order to distract us from real issues like — gee, I don’t know — the big ugly bill’s devastating impact on Americans?”
“Trump’s meeting with Putin while excluding Zelenskyy?” she continued.“Trump’s decades-long intimacy with Jeffrey Epstein? The devastating impacts of climate change? Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza?”
“Finnerty and Kelly really don’t want Americans to be asking important questions. For example, why does Trump think that building a $200M ballroom is more important than allowing Americans to keep their Medicaid insurance?” she added.
And as it relates to Finnerty’s remarks that the sorority rush videos are “uniquely American,” Winter thinks his remarks are “too idiotic to merit a response.”
Shaun Harper, a professor of education, business and public policy at the University of Southern California, said that when Finnerty and others make a point of celebrating the majority white sorority videos as proof that America is “healing,” what they’re really celebrating is “the absence of Black and brown faces in these videos, which to them looks familiar and characteristically American.”
And it’s all a tactic, Harper tells HuffPost.
“The conservative play here is predictable: lure liberals into a fight they didn’t ask for, misrepresent their critiques of exclusionary too-white spaces as wokeness, and then further convince the MAGA base that it is white Americans who are being discriminated against by policies and practices that aim to make organizations like sororities more racially diverse.”
And for those posting sorority rush videos as a way to slam the left? Winter says, “No one cares about sorority rush videos. Are you kidding me?”
