Welcome Sports Haters!

Thanks for your intelligent response.

Again, one of the problems with forum exchanges is the potential for misunderstanding. I believe that Jim Crow laws were evil. When I was a 10-year-old boy living in the Houston, Texas, of 1960 (before the major civil rights laws were passed in the US), I was all but a witness to a particularly vicious form of racial discrimination. I was home from school with a cold one day, when the black Korean War veteran who was working for my parents as a yardman was bitten by a cottonmouth behind our home. I remember my mom telling me that she was going to take him to the nearest clinic and that she would be back in time to cook dinner. (My dad was out of town at the time.) Well, she didn’t return in time to cook dinner. I remember seeing her in tears when she came in through the front door several hours since the time we would have had dinner. She had taken him to the nearest clinic, where I had been treated for a snakebite (copperhead) myself earlier that year. Even though he had served this country as a combat veteran who was suffering from shell shock, they turned him away because he was black. My mom took him to a hospital where he was not given immediate treatment for the snakebite. The white interns mocked him, despite his suffering. Yes, he did eventually receive treatment; but he was treated in a very demeaning way. And, remember, he was a combat veteran who had served his country. Absolutely shameful and despicable! So, please understand that I HATED Jim Crow and was appalled by the racial bigotry of the day. And I was enraged at all the conservative politicians who opposed civil rights legislation. All that I was trying to say in my post is that the bullying I was referring to was not just random badness, but was derived from a particular mindset that viewed others in a particular group (nonathletic boys) as being inferior and therefore deserving of mistreatment.

By the way, regarding the “elimination of sports” remark, I’ve become a friend of one of the creators of the website to which you were referring. Without any prompting from me, he admitted that some of the website’s rhetoric is hype.

I think another problem of forum exchanges is that some members make assumptions about what other members believe, as if those with whom they disagree must be deranged or evil. For example, I’m a critic of the football culture, especially how it is manifested in America’s schools (about which you and I apparently agree); but I don’t think sports should be “eradicated,” I don’t think all sports fans are “brain-dead,” I don’t think that all or most “jocks” are bullies, and I’m not a hateful person. I shouldn’t even have to say this.

In fact, the Jim Crow laws of the United States were quite similar to the Nuremburg decrees of Nazi Germany.

Incidentally, a certain book entitled The Feminized Male by Patricia Cayo Sexton, a sociology professor who is apparently also a bigot, is the Mein Kampf of the mindset to which I alluded. When I skimmed through this book, I felt like I was being personally attacked by a hag who didn't even know me. I think I knew how a black person, for example, feels who reads white racist hate literature.

I 'd love to see football n baseball replaced by gunnery practice,
archery, and SCUBA diving.

My liberal sister (whom I love dearly, despite our current political differences) once was a member of the National Rifle Association. Now, that's funny!

If any extracurricular group of high-school students should be automatically elevated to the top of the social hierarchy, it should be ROTC, whose members volunteer to put their lives on the line for our country.

I 've been a Life Member since the early 1960s.
On this forum, I 'm considered singlemindedly in favor of every citizen 's right
to defend his life and other property from the predatory violence of man or beast.
My motto is:
"Its better to HAVE a gun and NOT NEED it
than it is to NEED a gun and NOT HAVE it."

Its also that "gun control is O.S.H.A. for violent criminals
protecting them on-the-job from the defenses of their victims."



All right: u asked for it!
Here's my anti-sports ROTC story.
In college, I continued in my refusal to participate in sports,
but thay refused to give me an academic degree unless I attended those classes,
so I attended, but did not participate.

Thru out my schooling, I was alone, when I did that,
except in college, when there was another guy also.
His major was the Asian Studies Program. He took it very seriously.

We had time on our hands.
We discussed politics.
He told me that he was a communist
and that in the fullness of time,
he was going to defect to Red China.
We were both in senior Army ROTC. He was about to receive
a commission into Army Intelligence and Security. He was going
to use his top secret security clearance to gather up as many
of America 's military secrets, including secret codes
and begift the communists with them.

Since high school, I had been an undercover agent for the US
House of Representatives Committee On unAmerican Activities
in a joint program with the NY State Troopers.

I told him that I was going to warn Army Intelligence
of his impending espionage and treason. I did so.

I felt good about that.





David

dave, you know i love ya, but I can't resist...


"On this forum, I 'm considered singleminded"

indeed.

Oh, wow. Agreed. Agreed. You SHOULD have felt good about yourself. I salute you for YOUR past service to this country. Communists are scum!

I always thought thay were.





David

Is there something rong with saying that ??
What 's the problem ?

There is no problem. It was just that Wiz was using it to try to prove he had a much more severe English teacher than any of us and thus was better educated.

Does much more severe English grammar prohibit
saying that?? By what reasoning ?

I've no idea. I was only trying to embarrass Wiz.

I had a relatively severe English teacher in hi school (one of many English teachers)
in the sense of being demanding: Mrs. Price.

I was always strong in English and I grudgingly admired her hi standards.
(In those days and years, I spelled paradigmatically.)
I welcomed her challenge.
Qua whether I was thereby better educated: I guess a little bit.

Its so long ago; I wonder what percentage of her teaching I consciously remember.

Sometimes I feel nostalgic.
I remember my friends of early years,
with some of whom I attended school.





David

It can be dangerous to welcome the challenge
of a school teacher. There was a history teacher
who made a very good impression on me on his
first day on-the-job, in front of me.

On his 2nd day on-the-job in front of me,
I welcomed him with a counter-challenge. It almost killed him.
He became abruptly afflicted with labored breathing n profuse perspiration.
He looked like he was having a heart attack.
He threw me out of his class;
(which was just as well, since I became skeptical of his getting too close to my grades).

I overestimated his professional self-assurance n the strength of his ego.
Other history teachers coud stand up under my challenges,
but he coud not handle that.





David

Academically challenging your teachers in class
can be a fun sport; do u guys hate that ??

Bill? 1981?


One of my tenants is an English professor.
I challenge him all the time.



David

No, because some teachers are incompetent. And I speak as someone whose father once was a professor and as someone who is married to a retired teacher. I have a lot of sympathy for competent, conscientious teachers. A daughter of ours recently started teaching at a high school. She wouldn't mind being academically challenged. She just wants students to BEHAVE and at least TRY to do the work. Some (way too many) of them don't even try.

BTW, I'm appalled at textbooks that have factual errors (not matters of opinion). If I remember correctly, a chemistry textbook used at a local high school where we live identifies sodium chloride (table salt) as a COVALENT compound, instead of as the ionic compound it clearly is. Ridiculous.

I know; someone close to me was a trial judge b4 he retired,
who found that (class control) ofen to come out in testimony.
Teachers have proven to be disproportionately litigious (especially English teachers).




Indeed; its scandalous.
I saw one of the news shows (like 20/20 or 60 Minutes, etc.)
wherein a father of a grammar school student chanced to look at
his son 's history book and found a factual error, whereof he complained to the school,
which forwarded it to the publisher and had it corrected.
Upon examination of the corrected edition,
the objecting father found additional errors,
which (as described on the TV story) were also corrected,
after which MORE errors were found: victory was attributed to the rong side in military battles,
cities were said be in the rong states etc. ad nauseam.
After several interviews concerning re-edited corrections by the TV show reporter,
the representative of the publisher said that in the end it does not matter
which side won the battle; what matters is that the student forces himself to learn
the material whether it is true or false. To that publisher: intellectual honesty was a pariah.

I was shocked n scandalized.

In America, its been a while since we tarred and feathered anyone
(what do u think of that sport?)
but he seemed like a good candidate for it if justice were to be served.





David

"I have a lot of sympathy for competent, conscientious teachers. " wrote wmwcjr, in that tone one often hears when someone is wringing their hands and adopting the general physiognomy of a deeply serious and concerned person.

I have no sympathy with competent, conscientious teachers. They are only acting. They have a Union which guards their interests for a start. And their competence is generally of an order that can't command a higher salary elsewhere.

All you can hope for from teachers is that they don't screw you up.

Your story, Dave, of the student's father, which could have been a movie unless you can verify the facts, brought tears to my eyes.

It is true what the publisher says however. Latin is taught for that very reason. But so also are many subjects in which the facts learned are of no relevance to anybody but a specialised circle of experts who are by definition a very long way beyond those facts. A good example is the fact that sodium chloride (table salt) is not a COVALENT compound but is
instead an ionic compound.

If u think that I 'm gonna take the trouble
to verify the facts: u r out of your mind.
I saw interviews of the father, the publisher's representative,
& the school principal on a TV news show.
That 's enuf. Accept it or reject it or verify it yourself.



Pray tell Y ?

In America, no government has even the slightest authority to subject
the populace to any mental discipline.
The most that thay allege to have jurisdiction to do
is to convay information (which is supposed to be accurate).



If that has been perpetrated, it is a scandal of usurpation far worse than WATERGATE.