(At a football game) nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

From a piece about a mammoth public mural project in New York:

But while working in the United States, he said, the idea of the resolutely upbeat cheerleader - her charms alternately infectious and annoying - appealed to him as something quintessentially American. "You as a nation are the cheerleaders," he said.

So he started picking up copies of American Cheerleader magazine - "I thought I'd be arrested when I was buying it," he said - and using photographs for paintings. At the same time, he was struck by how much cheerleaders' contorted poses, in tight focus, can seem to be images of people being tortured. Later, a friend in Britain sent him a copy of a painting, probably a Flemish work from the 15th century, of a man being crucified, most likely one of the thieves executed alongside Jesus. The man's arms are lashed atop the horizontal bar of the cross, and his body is bent backward, with one leg extended back almost delicately. Finally, the last element was in place: Mr. Hume decided to paint a crucified cheerleader.

I'm not sure which part amuses me more: the equation of America with cheerleaders, or the observation that American cheerleaders of the 20th and 21st centuries bear a striking resemblance to torture victims of the Middle Ages.

Perhaps both of those say something about cheerleading; I'm just not sure what exactly.