2011 State of the Union Address

[recovering_fan]

Yeah! Kennedy just had to shoot off his big mouth about Americans being out of shape and having to go on 50 mile hikes. He just had to shoot off his big mouth about that....

Because after Kennedy shot off his big mouth about physical fitness and the 50 mile hikes, that is when the quality of education in our schools went down the crapper!

I can tell you all from experience that 50 miles is a miserable distance to have to walk in a day. I wonder if they had multiple days in which to finish the hike? I love to walk from place to place in town, but my speed is basically 3 mph, and I really can't do much to change that. Thus, I would have to walk for almost 17 hours to finish one of those horrible hikes that Kennedy apparently wanted us all to be able to handle. Horrors...

(The farthest I ever walk these days is 7 or 8 miles.)

[ChrisOH]

Yeah! Kennedy just had to shoot off his big mouth about Americans being out of shape and having to go on 50 mile hikes. He just had to shoot off his big mouth about that....

Because after Kennedy shot off his big mouth about physical fitness and the 50 mile hikes, that is when the quality of education in our schools went down the crapper!

I can tell you all from experience that 50 miles is a miserable distance to have to walk in a day. I wonder if they had multiple days in which to finish the hike? I love to walk from place to place in town, but my speed is basically 3 mph, and I really can't do much to change that. Thus, I would have to walk for almost 17 hours to finish one of those horrible hikes that Kennedy apparently wanted us all to be able to handle. Horrors...

(The farthest I ever walk these days is 7 or 8 miles.)

I did some reading on the "Kennedy Marches", as they came to be called online -- on one site, I found a picture of JFK's brother Bobby, who was Attorney General at the time, being treated/consoled by wife after finishing one of these marches as a way to set an "example" that it could be done. He apparently very nearly killed himself finishing it.

Turns out, Kennedy was borrowing an idea from Teddy Roosevelt from many year before, when TR had stated that U.S. soldiers should be able to march 50 miles in one day. Kennedy apparently felt that was a good goal for the military of his day as well, and made the public statement to that effect. The statement seems to have been intended for troops, not everyday citizens, but the public, many of whom saw JFK as the model of fitness and youthful vigor, took him at this word, and the extreme walking craze began. (Incidentally, I remember reading a few years back that JFK had some serious health conditions that likely would have shortened his life considerably even if Oswald's rifle shots hadn't gotten to him first, so the "youthful vigor" image of Kennedy was mostly a myth.)

Anyway, after Bobby Kennedy and others suffered some pretty bad effects from attempting these marches when they weren't physically prepared, the White House backtracked on it a bit, issuing statements that people should exercise within their limits, consult a physician, etc. It doesn't appeared the 50-mile hike fad survived much beyond Kennedy's assassination.

Personally, the longest hike I've done was 9 miles last year, over some very rugged terrain at a national park. I timed myself once, during a brisk 30-minute walk, at about 4 miles an hour. I don't know how long I could sustain that pace, though. (The 9-mile hike took about five hours to do, with some rest breaks included for water and a snack.)

[miketv]

I've never heard about the Kennedy Marches, but it's a pretty fascinating anecdote. Especially with the data charts. Wow...50 miles? I'm a walker by nature & a bike rider by choice. I didn't even get a driver's license until I was in my mid-twenties...I just really like fresh air. But once I unexpectedly had to walk 35 miles on a paved road, & when I got home I found my socks shredded & my feet bloody. "Exercise within your limits" does seem to be the smart slogan. Yet here we are with the mandatory Presidential Fitness Program in schools.

Fat Man, I feel for you. I went through school in a nightmare state at the hands of jocks. I was beaten up no less than 60 times between kindergarten & 10th grade (a few of the beatings could be considered brutal), & mercilessly taunted by the gym coaches. I actually was suspended for attacking my 10th grade gym coach after 2 years of his abuse. He made it quite clear he supported the bullies' "rights" to torment the weaker students. But I never went through the shit you went through. It's a damn shame. Civilized nation, my ass.

Priorities are so out of whack right now. I was actually rejected by the Army recently. I scored 94 out of 98 on my A.S.V.A.B. testing --the highest score my recruiting station has ever seen. Physically I was able to keep up with the young kids (& to my surprise, I even out-performed them in some cases) even though I was in my 30's. I was 2 days away from being sworn in as a Specialist on my way to becoming a Chinook pilot when I was suddenly rejected. I have a tattoo on back of my head, & I would have been out of uniform on parade marches because of it. It's amazing...so few people are willing to join the military nowadays, & even fewer have the "soldiering" potential I somehow ended up with. But that stuff isn't enough to make it in today's Army. You have to be pretty, too. There are a lot of things wrong in today's world. I'm pretty pissed at the Army, but I don't really hate the whole country for it. I choose to hate sports because it gives me one major problem to focus on.

To me, the scariest thing is that teachers, community leaders, role models, etc. are usually pretty quick to support a kid's dream of becoming a pro athlete. I'm not sure of the numbers (if anybody knows, I'd love to see them), but it seems like only 1 out of every few thousand kids actually make it to play sports on the pro level. So we end up with all these pissed off, wife-beating alcoholics who straggle through society with no purpose other than to consume sports trivia. It's cute that the role models "believe" in the kids, but why aren't they being truthful about their odds of going pro? Why let the kids grow up dumb & strong? Why not give them some real insight to the future? There will ALWAYS be kids who want to be pro athletes....there's no need for the president to go around encouraging it by showing an unswerving support of all things athletic. It's coddling & incredibly detrimental. When I register to vote, it will be because a candidate has proven to me that he has an interest in building kids' minds & gives no lip service to the dreams of athletes.

[ChrisOH]

To me, the scariest thing is that teachers, community leaders, role models, etc. are usually pretty quick to support a kid's dream of becoming a pro athlete. I'm not sure of the numbers (if anybody knows, I'd love to see them), but it seems like only 1 out of every few thousand kids actually make it to play sports on the pro level. So we end up with all these pissed off, wife-beating alcoholics who straggle through society with no purpose other than to consume sports trivia. It's cute that the role models "believe" in the kids, but why aren't they being truthful about their odds of going pro? Why let the kids grow up dumb & strong? Why not give them some real insight to the future? There will ALWAYS be kids who want to be pro athletes....there's no need for the president to go around encouraging it by showing an unswerving support of all things athletic. It's coddling & incredibly detrimental. When I register to vote, it will be because a candidate has proven to me that he has an interest in building kids' minds & gives no lip service to the dreams of athletes.

At my former job, there was a guy (a "sports bore", as he would be denoted on this forum) who told me how he lectured his son (about age 13 at the time) that he should do his homework just to get through school, but that he should be watching sports on TV every chance he got, to get himself into the "sports mindset", because becoming a pro athlete was his only shot at being anything at life, since he had no skills at anything else. (Great fatherly encouragement for a child, no?) He would then bemoan the fact that his son seemed uninterested during Little League baseball and football games that he played in. I suggested to him that perhaps his son just wasn't interested in sports, and given the astronomical odds against even good youth athletes ever playing professionally, he just might want to encourage some other interests in his son's life. He'd have none of it, though, repeatedly stating how "stupid" his son was at academics, and that sports was his only shot at success. (Again, such great fatherly support for one's child -- "you're too dumb to do anything else, boy" -- those words would sure inspire me! )

[recovering_fan]

At my former job, there was a guy (a "sports bore", as he would be denoted on this forum) who told me how he lectured his son (about age 13 at the time) that he should do his homework just to get through school, but that he should be watching sports on TV every chance he got, to get himself into the "sports mindset", because becoming a pro athlete was his only shot at being anything at life, since he had no skills at anything else.

I tell ya, Chris. it's incredible what sort of diseased thinking passes for sanity these day. Some people have really diseased conceptions of reality. Did Child Services know about your co-worker's parenting problems?

I can tell you all from experience that 50 miles is a miserable distance to have to walk in a day.

Oops. I just re-read this, and it looks as if I was talking about actually having hiked 50 miles in a day! Nope, never happened. What I meant was that, based on hiking experiences, I could imagine how ridiculous a distance of 50 miles would be to hike.

--RF

[miketv]

Chris, I'm reading a book called Until It Hurts: America's Obsession With Youth Sports & How it Harms Our Kids, and your post could have been taken right from the pages. Only 2 chapters in, I'm reading about some horrible things parents will do to ensure their child is the next famous date-rapist or dogfight promoter. The author himself was one of those crazy sports dads who changed his ways when he realized he was forcing his son to have the Tommy John operation to enhance his pitching skills.

The book also mentioned a website, athleticbaby.com, where parents can buy DVDs designed to build sports interest in infants. Parents too often give up on a child's mental & social abilities before the kid even has a chance to develop them. Their line of logic seems to be this: the kid hasn't made me any money or won a Nobel Prize yet, so he probably doesn't have a good brain. So let's give him a good body. If the good body doesn't pay off, then hey--at least I tried everything I could think of.

At this point (again, I'm only 2 chapters in) I recommend this book to everyone.
http://www.amazon.com/Until-Hurts-Ameri ... 561&sr=8-1

[ChrisOH]

At this point (again, I'm only 2 chapters in) I recommend this book to everyone.
http://www.amazon.com/Until-Hurts-Ameri ... 561&sr=8-1

Hello MikeTV!

That sounds like a fascinating (albeit disturbing) book -- I'll have to check it out!

[miketv]

It's pretty disturbing, but so far it's nowhere NEAR as disturbing as Our Guys
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Guys-Bernard- ... 803&sr=8-1
I had to read it in college. It's the true story of a high school baseball team gang raping a mentally retarded girl & getting away with it because the entire town supported the jocks' right to behave however they wanted. Interesting side note: it's the school Tom Cruise went to just a few years before.

If you know anybody who thinks you're crazy for being against sports, buy em a copy of this book & see if they join you. If they can make it past the part describing the bloody, splintery baseball bat without changing their mind about the effect sports have on society, I'd go ahead & write that person off as unstable or stupid.

[Fat Man]

Chris, I'm reading a book called Until It Hurts: America's Obsession With Youth Sports & How it Harms Our Kids, and your post could have been taken right from the pages. Only 2 chapters in, I'm reading about some horrible things parents will do to ensure their child is the next famous date-rapist or dogfight promoter. The author himself was one of those crazy sports dads who changed his ways when he realized he was forcing his son to have the Tommy John operation to enhance his pitching skills.

The book also mentioned a website, athleticbaby.com, where parents can buy DVDs designed to build sports interest in infants. Parents too often give up on a child's mental & social abilities before the kid even has a chance to develop them. Their line of logic seems to be this: the kid hasn't made me any money or won a Nobel Prize yet, so he probably doesn't have a good brain. So let's give him a good body. If the good body doesn't pay off, then hey--at least I tried everything I could think of.

At this point (again, I'm only 2 chapters in) I recommend this book to everyone.
http://www.amazon.com/Until-Hurts-Ameri ... 561&sr=8-1

OK, first of all . . .

. . . he author himself was one of those crazy sports dads who changed his ways when he realized he was forcing his son to have the Tommy John operation to enhance his pitching skills.

Now, I have to wonder if some parents are so fucking moronic that they would be willing to have their sons go in for a surgical procedure, like a pre-frontal lobotomy for example: so that their sons would make better football players, since it's a sports the requires little or no brains, or shit for brains!

OK, well . . . . . anyway . . . . .

Next month, I'm going to order that book, Until It Hurts: America's Obsession With Youth Sports & How it Harms Our Kids.

But NOT from Amazon!!! I'm boycotting Amazon!



So, I'm going to order it from Barnes & Noble instead.

The reason why I'm boycotting Amazon, I talk about in one of my topics titled:
BOYCOTT AMAZON!!!
http://www.sportssuck.org/phpbb2/viewto ... ott+Amazon

Please do check it out! OK?

OK, now I am against censorship, but I draw the line when it comes to kiddie porn and books written by pedophiles.

One book in particular, which has been sold by Amazon is titled . . . . .

Viamund The Boy/Love Vampyre

By - Viamund the Rake - AKA - Octaevius Altair

Most book sellers, especially Barnes & Noble have had the common decency to refuse to sell this vile piece of garbage.

But Amazon cares more about making money than they do for innocent young lives, so fuck 'em!

You see, when I was 17 years old, I was beaten and raped by an older man. This was back in April of 1969, and back in the 1960s and 1970s nobody would believe that a guy could get raped. I was in desperate need of some kind of psychological counseling but none was forthcoming. The shrinks were not interested in anything I had to say. They just prescribed tranquilizers and sent me home.

I believe in free speech for everybody, except pedophiles who desire to have sex with children. They just need to shut the fuck up and die!

In fact, I advocate the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists.



And here are some more cures for pedophilia.



And every household with children should keep one of these handy dandy spray cans!



It's an UZI, made in Israel.

It's Kosher!