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Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Sun May 27, 2012 6:17 pm
by Fat Man
SPORTS CULTURE OR SPORTS CULT?

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The following article is an example of what professional sports have in common with cults, and how sports has become something like a religion.

http://www.greanvillepost.com/2011/12/1 ... societies/
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When Cults Collide: How Big Sports and
CEO Worship Threaten Societies

December 17th, 2011

By Lynn Parramore, AlterNet

Many of the values that make people good citizens, like sympathy and mutual support, are antithetical to the goals of sports teams. Programs receive millions of dollars of public funds, very often at the expense of education.�

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The silence. The lack of accountability. The blind loyalty. The case of Penn Stateâ??s Jerry Sandusky (who waived his right to a hearing on Tuesday) and similar horrors have shown us that under certain circumstances, otherwise normal people will stand by in the face of crimes as heinous as systemic child abuse and child rape. How could it happen that a university would protect a football program over the lives of innocent children?

The real question is: How could it be otherwise?

The Church of Football

Big Sports in America, along with the corporate religion of CEO-worship, exhibits cult-like features that make the tolerance of criminal activity something we should expect. When cults collide, conditions emerge that are poisonous to healthy, law-abiding, open societies.

When I arrived at the University of Georgia in 1988, one thing was clear. Football was a very big deal. On a typical game day, sorority women decked out in demure Laura Ashley dresses and stockings accompanied frat guys in red ties to Sanford Stadium, the 14th largest such sports venue on Earth. Our stockings served a dual purpose. They signaled the importance of the occasion, and they allowed us to slide Ziploc bags filled with Bourbon just inside our thighsâ??a place the cops wouldnâ??t dare frisk us. Getting obliterated on game day was a hallowed tradition. The sacred space â??between the hedges,â? as the playing field was fondly known, was designated for autumn bacchanalias intense enough to render the odor of Bourbon permanently intolerable to me.

Football was a realm unto itself in Athens, GA. Coach Vince Dooley was a god, and his players were strange godlings with steroid-pumped physiques, entitled to their own luxurious dorm complexes complete with swimming pools. They got special academic treatment; a row of hulking men shoe-horned into tiny desks in the back row meant an easy class. The university even sponsored a prestigious group of attractive female students known as â??Georgia Girls.â? These women were not cheerleaders â?? their role was to join recruiting expeditions to high schools and, you know, recruit.

Such was the Church of Football, southern-style.

In his essay â??The Sporting Spirit,â? George Orwell outed the cult-like aspect of large-scale sports, which arose in the 19th century in England and the U.S. in a way the world had not seen since Roman times. He debunked the myth that serious sports was nothing more than good clean fun. Sure, itâ??s possible to play harmless games, but when losing means shame for the whole group, barbaric instincts surface. The competition takes on the character of warfare, where winning is the virtue, and getting in the way of winning is the vice. Intense rivalries beget a culture of cheating. Serious sports arenâ??t about fair play, concludes Orwell, but rather â??hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.â?

Along with the rise of nationalism, big time sports grew as heavily financed activities that could draw huge crowds and inspire extreme loyalty. People learned to identify with larger power units and to view everything in terms of competitive clout. Organized games flourished in urban communities where workers lived sedentary and confined lives without much chance of creativity or physical release. Cursing the other team on game day was an outlet for pent-up sadistic impulses.

In Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky notes that large-scale sports encourages anti-social human psychology and passive acceptance of traits like aggression. â??Itâ??s hard to imagine anything,â? he observes, â??that contributes more fundamentally to authoritarian attitudes than this does.â? (See this video).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLbckGjuYpk

College sports mega-programs, like football and basketball, are not built to nurture good and useful citizens, but to produce athletes who can draw in money through ticket sales or athletic boosters. Many of the values that make people good citizens, like sympathy and mutual support, are antithetical to the goals of sports teams. Programs receive millions of dollars of public funds, very often at the expense of education. The norms and values of the cult and those that make for a healthy society diverge.

Cults share several tell-tale characteristics, such as ritualistic activities, active recruiting, promises of reward or fame for converts, expectations of sacrifice for the group, and threats of humiliation and punishment for lack of compliance. And they always have charismatic, authoritarian leaders.

The Rise of the CEO Cult

The cult of the CEO in American business sprouted in the fertile soil of the go-go 80s and 90s. Instead of choosing knowledgeable insiders or â??organization menâ? who had risen up through the ranks, businesses began to look outside for celebrity leaders. As the structure of corporate ownership changed, big investors like mutual funds sought bigger profits. So they financed leveraged buyouts by private equity firms that would then toss out old management. When states passed anti-takeover laws, the investors took to pressuring boards of directors and often acting together to elect their own directors. CEO heads rolled left and right. If a company was performing badly, it must be the CEO. Likewise, if a company did well, the CEO got all the credit.

Lee Iacocca became a star for saving Chrysler â?? never mind the $2-billion federally guaranteed bail out and United Auto Workersâ?? givebacks that played major roles. Jack Welch earned hero status at General Electric with his philosophy that if you werenâ??t #1 or #2 in an industry, you were a loser. His stardom completely obscured the tens of thousands of workers whose sweat actually produced the products. Welch was celebrated for his callousness towards workers, nicknamed â??Neutron Jackâ? for his specialty of decimating workforces while leaving buildings intact.

No longer a sober administrator pretty much unknown outside the company, the CEO was a charismatic leader, understood to embody quasi-religious vision, values, and mission. Who dared to question a sacred leader? (See Craig Lambertâ??s â??The Cult of the Charismatic CEOâ? in Harvard Magazine).

Boards heaped piles of money on such deified individuals, offering crazy perks and rewards regardless of performance. Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom all had celebrity CEOs who blew up the companies they were hired to lead. The recent financial crash exposed the recklessness and malfeasance of CEOs like Richard Fuld (Lehman Brothers), Ken Lewis (Bank of America), and Angelo Mozilo (Countrywide Financial). In a recent report by Michael Hudson, management guru Cynder Niemela, fired from Countrywide after challenging fraud against customers and mistreatment of employees, describes â??a toxic culture ruled by fear and top-down intimidation.â? Plenty of CEOs like Mozilo are still leading corporations, some have government appointments, and none of them have gone to jail. Inept, corrupt, and self-serving individuals continue to inflict damage on the economy and suffering on millions of people, all the while collecting astronomical salaries.

The CEO reigns as Grand Imperial Poobah of the business universe, invested by boards with powers that would be envied by an Oriental despot. Gone are the committees and oversight mechanisms that would have kept such people in check in the 1950s. They exercise a tight flow of information, and they keep close tabs on potential whistleblowers. But this model no longer afflicts only corporations. It has infected everything from non-profits to universities.

Insanity of Insanities

As the salaries of corporate CEOs began to skyrocket, other sectors of society felt obliged to keep up. The position of university president came to look more like that of a private sector CEO: the priority was no longer education, but rather fund-raising, maintaining political influence, and channeling those quasi-religious elements believed to inhabit his corporate counterpart. Once upon a time, internal candidates like provosts and deans were considered viable contenders for the job of president. But that changed as universities increasingly aped the practices of the corporate world. They wanted stars. And they were prepared to pay for them, right out of studentsâ?? pockets.

The New York Times reports that over the 1999-2000 to 2009-10 decade, the average pay of university presidents at the 50 wealthiest universities increased by 75 percent, while the pay of professors rose only 14 percent. A recent report by the Chronicle of Higher Education showed that by 2008, thirty private college and university presidents earned more than $1 million during the 2008 fiscal year. The late Bernard Lander, founder and president of Touro College, topped the list, earning a jaw-dropping $4,786,830 in 2008 (including $4.2 million in retroactive pay and retirement benefits).

Lavish as their salaries may be, few college presidents can match the Big Sports coaches they â??employ.â? In a time of tight budgets and instructional spending declines, the salaries of coaches have soared. In 2011, the average compensation for a major-college head coach is $1.47 million, a jump of nearly 55% in six seasons. In his first season as head football coach at Florida State, Jimbo Fisher enjoyed a $950,000 raise, bringing his salary to a hefty $2.8 million, which is nothing compared to Mack Brown, head coach of the University of Texasâ??s Austin Longhorn football team, who pulls in $5 million.

School officials like to say that coach salaries come from TV, media and marketing contracts. Not so, reported USA Today: 80 â?? 95% of Division I-A athletic departments must draw on university or state funds or student fees to pay coaches.

William Lazonick, director of the University of Massachusetts Center for Industrial Competitiveness and president of The Academic-Industry Research Network, told AlterNet that such stratospheric salaries for leaders are detrimental: â??Whether in business corporations or universities, extraordinarily high pay for those at the top separates their interests from those of the people in the organizations that they are purportedly leading, and indeed these so-called leaders put in place administrative procedures to enhance and protect their personal interests.â?

Football, the favorite sport of corporate America, produces the most revered celebrity coaches. Penn Stateâ??s Joe Paterno represents the sort of sanctified end state of this system where cults collide. Like many of his coaching colleagues, â??JoePa,â? as he is fondly known, has been considered one of the most august citizens of his state, worshipped by millions, accountable to no one, and the recipient of a $1 million per year salary. To many, it seems irrational that such a man would fail to notify the police when a graduate assistant told him that he had witnessed defensive coordinator Jerry Sandulsky sodomizing a young boy in the shower â?? a crime normally considered to be among the most depraved in society. And thereâ??s also a lot of shock over why no one else in the system who was informed did so, like erstwhile president Graham Spanier. But, as sociologist Max Weber has pointed out, charismatic leadership is inhospitable to rationality. The authority invested in laws and institutions tends to wither in the leaderâ??s wake. The importance of average people diminishes. As recent accounts attest, Spanier was a typical specimen of the university president-as-CEO: controlling of information, hostile to whistleblowers, fond of secrecy, and a believer in centralized authority. Of course, he was not as powerful as Joe Paterno, who, in the words of former Penn State athletic director Bill Byrne â??helped choose the trusteesâ? and â??owns the community.â? So when JoePa went, he went, too.

Cults are very, very good at hiding terrible things within their walls. This is true no matter which sector of society you find them in. When Big Sports and corporate religion come together, as they do so spectacularly in college football and basketball, youâ??ve got every element needed for the commission and condoning of the most devastating crimes: An entire swath of society trained to disregard the rules, to view people outside the system as enemies, to worship leaders, and to channel a host of anti-social values, including sadism.

Sanduskyâ??s waiving of the right to a hearing signals that his lawyers may be hoping for a plea deal that would automatically send him to prison without the need for a trial. So some boys may be safer. But until we put in place systems that inhibit the growth of such conditions, we can be sure that such crimes will continue. In some other university, in some other town. Maybe yours.

Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet contributing editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.
Yes, sports is becoming more and more like a religious cult. In fact, it is a cult, but unlike religion, there is no worship of a deity or deities, but rather, the football players themselves are worshiped like some sort of tin gods, so, sports have a lot in common with paganism.

The only thing missing is a sports cult version of an after-fife, but hold on, it's coming!

As sports becomes more and more onto a religion, they'll probably will, eventually, have their own version of an after-life where all the "good" athletes will go to Jock Heaven, and all the science nerds and techno-geeks who don't care for sports will probably go to Nerd Hell.

Hell, thanks to the dominant sports culture/sports cult, it's already Nerd Hell on earth!

Sports is just another authoritarian cult, just like religious cults, and political cults, where critical thinking is discouraged. Sports already has it's own version of The Inquisition, only, instead of stretch racks and thumb screws, non-athletic students in our schools have had locker doors slammed on their hands, been thrown down a flight or stairs or through a plate glass window, or have been sodomized with broomsticks in the locker rooms.

Yes, I have read about this sort of thing in various NEWS articles shortly after the Columbine incident!

Sports has much in common with the Catholic cult (yes, it's a cult!) where, just as children have been sexually molested by priests, children at Penn State have been sexually molested by their assistant coach, Sandusky, and some coeds have been raped by the jocks at Notre Dame University.

It has gotten completely out of control, and the quality of education in our schools AND colleges has been on a steady decline, swirling down the crapper for decades!

Anyway . . . . .

The following article was written by George Orwell (Author of fiction novel, 1984) back in 1945, and it appears the very little has changed since then, if anything, it has actually gotten even worse.

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/spiri ... h/e_spirit
George Orwell

The Sporting Spirit


Now that the brief visit of the Dynamo football team has come to an end, it is possible to say publicly what many thinking people were saying privately before the Dynamos ever arrived. That is, that sport is an unfailing cause of ill-will, and that if such a visit as this had any effect at all on Anglo-Soviet relations, it could only be to make them slightly worse than before.

Even the newspapers have been unable to conceal the fact that at least two of the four matches played led to much bad feeling. At the Arsenal match, I am told by someone who was there, a British and a Russian player came to blows and the crowd booed the referee. The Glasgow match, someone else informs me, was simply a free-for-all from the start. And then there was the controversy, typical of our nationalistic age, about the composition of the Arsenal team. Was it really an all-England team, as claimed by the Russians, or merely a league team, as claimed by the British? And did the Dynamos end their tour abruptly in order to avoid playing an all-England team? As usual, everyone answers these questions according to his political predilections. Not quite everyone, however. I noted with interest, as an instance of the vicious passions that football provokes, that the sporting correspondent of the russophile News Chronicle took the anti-Russian line and maintained that Arsenal was not an all-England team. No doubt the controversy will continue to echo for years in the footnotes of history books. Meanwhile the result of the Dynamos' tour, in so far as it has had any result, will have been to create fresh animosity on both sides.

And how could it be otherwise? I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

Nearly all the sports practiced nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved. it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe â?? at any rate for short periods â?? that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.

Even a leisurely game like cricket, demanding grace rather than strength, can cause much ill-will, as we saw in the controversy over body-line bowling and over the rough tactics of the Australian team that visited England in 1921. Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners, is far worse. Worst of all is boxing. One of the most horrible sights in the world is a fight between white and coloured boxers before a mixed audience. But a boxing audience is always disgusting, and the behaviour of the women, in particular, is such that the army, I believe, does not allow them to attend its contests. At any rate, two or three years ago, when Home Guards and regular troops were holding a boxing tournament, I was placed on guard at the door of the hall, with orders to keep the women out.

In England, the obsession with sport is bad enough, but even fiercer passions are aroused in young countries where games playing and nationalism are both recent developments. In countries like India or Burma, it is necessary at football matches to have strong cordons of police to keep the crowd from invading the field. In Burma, I have seen the supporters of one side break through the police and disable the goalkeeper of the opposing side at a critical moment. The first big football match that was played in Spain about fifteen years ago led to an uncontrollable riot. As soon as strong feelings of rivalry are aroused, the notion of playing the game according to the rules always vanishes. People want to see one side on top and the other side humiliated, and they forget that victory gained through cheating or through the intervention of the crowd is meaningless. Even when the spectators don't intervene physically they try to influence the game by cheering their own side and â??rattlingâ? opposing players with boos and insults. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

Instead of blah-blahing about the clean, healthy rivalry of the football field and the great part played by the Olympic Games in bringing the nations together, it is more useful to inquire how and why this modern cult of sport arose. Most of the games we now play are of ancient origin, but sport does not seem to have been taken very seriously between Roman times and the nineteenth century. Even in the English public schools the games cult did not start till the later part of the last century. Dr Arnold, generally regarded as the founder of the modern public school, looked on games as simply a waste of time. Then, chiefly in England and the United States, games were built up into a heavily-financed activity, capable of attracting vast crowds and rousing savage passions, and the infection spread from country to country. It is the most violently combative sports, football and boxing, that have spread the widest. There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism â?? that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige. Also, organised games are more likely to flourish in urban communities where the average human being lives a sedentary or at least a confined life, and does not get much opportunity for creative labour. In a rustic community a boy or young man works off a good deal of his surplus energy by walking, swimming, snowballing, climbing trees, riding horses, and by various sports involving cruelty to animals, such as fishing, cock-fighting and ferreting for rats. In a big town one must indulge in group activities if one wants an outlet for one's physical strength or for one's sadistic impulses. Games are taken seriously in London and New York, and they were taken seriously in Rome and Byzantium: in the Middle Ages they were played, and probably played with much physical brutality, but they were not mixed up with politics nor a cause of group hatreds.

If you wanted to add to the vast fund of ill-will existing in the world at this moment, you could hardly do it better than by a series of football matches between Jews and Arabs, Germans and Czechs, Indians and British, Russians and Poles, and Italians and Jugoslavs, each match to be watched by a mixed audience of 100,000 spectators. I do not, of course, suggest that sport is one of the main causes of international rivalry; big-scale sport is itself, I think, merely another effect of the causes that have produced nationalism. Still, you do make things worse by sending forth a team of eleven men, labelled as national champions, to do battle against some rival team, and allowing it to be felt on all sides that whichever nation is defeated will â??lose faceâ?.

I hope, therefore, that we shan't follow up the visit of the Dynamos by sending a British team to the USSR. If we must do so, then let us send a second-rate team which is sure to be beaten and cannot be claimed to represent Britain as a whole. There are quite enough real causes of trouble already, and we need not add to them by encouraging young men to kick each other on the shins amid the roars of infuriated spectators.

1945

THE END

____BD____
George Orwell: â??The Sporting Spiritâ??
First published: Tribune. â?? GB, London. â?? December 1945.

Reprinted:
â?? â??Shooting an Elephant and Other Essaysâ??. â?? 1950.
â?? â??The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwellâ??. â?? 1968.
Yeah! The more things change, the more they stay the same!

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Uh huh! Sports is just another cult!

Gee! I wonder when they're going to start serving up the poison Kool Aide!

That's coming next!

Oh gee! Am I being cynical again?

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 7:35 pm
by Fitman's Brother
Too long, didn't read.

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 7:54 pm
by Fat Man
Fitman's Brother wrote:Too long, didn't read.
Most retards don't like reading!

When I was only 9 years old during the summer I would go to the public library and check out adult level books on Astronomy, and spend on average 3 to 5 hours reading on a typical hot summer day!

Yeah, I know! I know! I should have been out chasing a ball.

Fuck! I can teach a dog to do that!

I can't stand people who don't like reading.

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 8:14 pm
by Fitman's Brother
If you're so smart, why does your very existence depend on the hard of people like myself?

You're a lazy good for nothing slob. And by the way, I am STILL waiting for you to kiss my hiney for all the money my brother and I have paid into the system for you to collect.

That's OUR money you're taking from us, you thief! You're a criminal for taking money that's not yours! You should be locked up and starved to death, then fed to dogs! Yeah! Then you will be contributing to society

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Mon May 28, 2012 9:27 pm
by Earl
I'm saddened by the level of personal animosity in these exchanges. There comes a point when it no longer matters who started it. When both of you resort to personal insults, you risk becoming mirror images of each other.

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 5:40 am
by Fat Man
Earl wrote:I'm saddened by the level of personal animosity in these exchanges. There comes a point when it no longer matters who started it. When both of you resort to personal insults, you risk becoming mirror images of each other.
Good evening Earl:

Arguing with a sports fan is like trying to play Chess with a pigeon.

It doesn't matter how good of a Chess player you are; it walks around the board knocking over the pieces, takes a crap on the board, then it sticks its chest out and struts around as if it had won something, and then, flies back to the pigeon coupe claiming victory!

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 1:12 am
by Fitman's Brother
Looks like Fat Man admitted defeat.

You're welcome for my hard earned money, Fatass.

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 9:17 pm
by recovering_fan
Earl wrote:I'm saddened by the level of personal animosity in these exchanges. There comes a point when it no longer matters who started it. When both of you resort to personal insults, you risk becoming mirror images of each other.
It's more like Fat Man is walking through a hall of mirrors. Fit Man was already supposed to be Fat Man's mirror image. This new "brother" character is redundant in that regard.

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 1:47 pm
by sportslover
Fitman's Brother wrote:Too long, didn't read.

Wow, something else me and fatman agree on. I hate how kids today can't stand reading.... I read with kids as part of my job at a elementary school and the number of them that say "It's boring" or "I hate reading" is disgusting

It saddens me. I was reading by 3... was always ahead of my class in reading throughout school and to see people hate it upsets me..... Too sad the world we live in!!

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Thu May 31, 2012 3:37 pm
by ChrisOH
sportslover wrote:
Fitman's Brother wrote:Too long, didn't read.

Wow, something else me and fatman agree on. I hate how kids today can't stand reading.... I read with kids as part of my job at a elementary school and the number of them that say "It's boring" or "I hate reading" is disgusting

It saddens me. I was reading by 3... was always ahead of my class in reading throughout school and to see people hate it upsets me..... Too sad the world we live in!!
I've been somewhat preoccupied the last several days, so I only got around to reading Fat Man's OP this morning, and the entire post took less than ten minutes to read, once I sat down to it, and I found it very insightful. Fitman's Brother's dismissive "too long, didn't read" comment only serves to make him appear more troll-ish. He could easily have waited until he had time to actually read the post before commenting, but why bother when you're just trying to be a agent provocateur anyway?

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2012 4:51 pm
by recovering_fan
Fat Man wrote: The following article was written by George Orwell (Author of fiction novel, 1984) back in 1945, and it appears the very little has changed since then, if anything, it has actually gotten even worse.

http://orwell.ru/library/articles/spiri ... h/e_spirit


...

On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved. it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe â?? at any rate for short periods â?? that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.

...


Here's a novel idea for high school sporting events in the future:

Instead of playing on behalf of one's own school, the school sports club from Town A could travel to Town B, and once both groups were assembled they could form two teams, each team involving players from both towns. That would re-create the "village green" dynamic, where players competed with their friends, and sports could truly come to foster goodwill between people of different places.

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 9:07 am
by Fat Man
[b][color=#FF00FF]Fitman's Brother[/color][/b] wrote:Too long, didn't read.
Have you been playing with your home lobotomy kit again?
ChrisOH wrote:
sportslover wrote:
[b][color=#FF00FF]Fitman's Brother[/color][/b] wrote:Too long, didn't read.
Wow, something else me and fatman agree on. I hate how kids today can't stand reading.... I read with kids as part of my job at a elementary school and the number of them that say "It's boring" or "I hate reading" is disgusting

It saddens me. I was reading by 3... was always ahead of my class in reading throughout school and to see people hate it upsets me..... Too sad the world we live in!!
I've been somewhat preoccupied the last several days, so I only got around to reading Fat Man's OP this morning, and the entire post took less than ten minutes to read, once I sat down to it, and I found it very insightful. Fitman's Brother's dismissive "too long, didn't read" comment only serves to make him appear more troll-ish. He could easily have waited until he had time to actually read the post before commenting, but why bother when you're just trying to be a agent provocateur anyway?
Sorry I didn't respond in this topic much sooner. I've been busy with other things, like preparing to observe the Transit of Venus across the face of the sun, which I saw on Tuesday, June 5th.

Anyway . . .

Yes, my mother taught me how to read when I was 3 or 4 years old before I even started going to school, and I was in the second grade when I checked out my first book on astronomy from the school library.

Back then, being a small town, the high school, junior high and elementary grade classes were all in the same building, until they built a new elementary school two miles south of town and then we had to take the school buses, until I was in the 6th grade.

I was in the 5th grade when left the old school after Christmas vacation and started going to the new school, so I was there during the 5th and 6th grades. Otherwise, from grades 1 to 5 we were in the old school.

Anyway, after checking out my first astronomy book, I wanted to read even more. The teachers I had from grades 1 to 4 were very encouraging. When ever one of those teachers wanted me to stay after school, it was not for punishment, but rather, I was usually handed a folder with science articles clipped out from magazines. That was when I started checking out books from the school library at higher and higher grade levels, so I was allowed to go into the library room next doors where they had books at the high school level. The school library had two rooms, one room with books at grade school level and the second room with books at high school level. So, up until I was in the 4th grade, I was allowed to go into the library room where they had the high school level books. That's why I was able to read at high school level when I was only in the 3rd and 4th grade. I had a Websters Dictionary, so when I came across some words I didn't understand, I would consult the dictionary for the pronunciation and meaning, and then add the words to my vocabulary.

So, I was really getting somewhere.

That is, until I entered the 5th grade, and had my first male teacher, a sports obsessed tyrant who really ruined it for me, and after that, things started going down hill for me, not being allowed to check out Astronomy books anymore, and getting my head bashed against the corner of a brick wall in an argument over a book I was not allowed to read, and also, getting punched in the stomach really hard with a basketball in the gym. He could have easily fractured some ribs.

After each incident, my parents took me to the clinic to be examined by the doctor. After I got my head bashed against the wall, I got my head X-rayed to make sure there were no skull fractures, and after the basketball incident, when I came home from school complaining of pain around my lower ribs, again, my parents took me to the clinic for a chest X-ray.

And this was back in 1962 before we had Medicaid/Medicare, so, my parents had to pay the doctor bill. We should have sent the bill to the school, and made them pay for it. Yeah, my parents picked up the tab.

Oh, and I didn't come from a welfare family either. My parents were factory workers, and they paid property taxes on a house we bought, and also, paid SCHOOL TAXES on said property.

Yeah, when it came to sports, my 5th grade teacher was like a marine drill Sargent. Actually he was much worse, because in the military, if a drill Sargent were to bash a solders head against a concrete block wall, he would get a court martial for it. A drill Sargent may yell at his troops, cuss and swear at his troops, and even verbally insult them, and be down on their asses 24/7 but he can't physically assault them, else he will face a court martial.

Anyway . . . . .

The following year, my 5th grade teacher was fired, and was unable to get another teaching job anywhere else after that. It turns out, that he had a past criminal record, that there were some incidents in some previous schools where he had taught. He was responsible for a fire in a small two-room school house out in the country when he lived in Michigan before coming to Minnesota.

Anyway, in the year that my 5th grade teacher was fired, after that, he couldn't get a teaching job anywhere else. He also left town and moved away somewhere.

But, for me that damage was done.

I was 11 years old during the head bashing incident, and after that, I had dizzy spells and headaches which made it hard for me to concentrate in school. I also lost control of my emotions, and I became more short tempered. So, there had to have been some brain damage from the severe concussion.

Sometime during class, I would get headaches, and I often came home from school with a headache. When I would lay down, I couldn't lay on my back anymore, because I would get these dizzy spells, like the room was rocking rapidly from side to side. I would shake my head and it would go away. If I laid on either my left side or right side, then I didn't get those dizzy spells, unless I laid on my back.

I had these dizzy spells and headaches through out my teenage years, but as I got older, the headaches and the dizzy spells came less frequently, and not as intense, and when I was in my early 20s I didn't get those headaches and dizzy spells anymore.

That sharp blow to the back of my head must have cause some kind of brain damage.

Yeah! That was the price I had to pay for my love of reading books.

Also, book censorship is a real hot-button issue for me!

I remember back in the 1980s during the Reagan Administration, I would watch the NEWS broadcasts of public demonstrations of book burnings. Various right-wing and fundamentalist religious groups staged book burning demonstrations. Watching those scenes gave me nightmares.

I also remember seeing old black & white film clippings from World War II in which the Nazis publicly burned piles of books, and the NEWS broadcasts during the 1980s reminded me of those old black & white film segments, only the 1980s NEWS videos were in living color. Otherwise, not much difference.

And of course, the beat goes on! La de da de da! And the beat goes on!

Now, here in our own Texas State Board of Education (or should I say, Indoctrination) we have a bunch of right-wing wackos who want to control what is being taught in our schools.

Here is a YouTube link from an ABC NEWS NIGHTLINE clipping that I had downloaded from another user's channel, and uploaded to my own channel, with annotations that I had added to said video.

Don McLeroy - The Creationist in Charge of Education in Texas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOBnmObTMbk
--------------------------------------------------
Uploaded by BigFatHeretic on May 28, 2011

March 11, 2010 on ABC Nightline:

Fundamentalist Christian dentist (hey! That rhymes!) Don McLeory, promotes drastic curriculum change for school textbooks in the state of Texas.

Among some of the proposed changes would be to remove any mention of Thomas Jefferson from the history textbooks and replace him with John Calvin, a raving maniac who a few centuries ago had people tortured in the name of his religion.

This, of course, is not mentioned in the NEWS clipping on the video above, but many other purposed changes are mentioned.

Don McLeoroy was eventually voted out of the Texas State Board of Education, but it's too late, because the board has selected the Textbooks that will be used for the next 10 years, so we're all, like, royally screwed!

Category: News & Politics

Tags: NEWS Politics Events Education Religion Controversy

License: Standard YouTube License
--------------------------------------------------

Of course, the video is old news, but I like to keep it as the feature video on my YouTube Channel page.

EVOLUTION! Doing My Part To Piss Off The Religious Right!
by BigFatHeretic
http://www.youtube.com/user/BigFatHeretic?feature

The first time I had ever seen this video of Don McLeroy, it gave me flashbacks!

This Don McLeroy creep bears a remarkable resemblance to the teacher I had in the 5th grade, the bastard who bashed my head against the corner of a concrete block wall in an argument over an Astronomy book he would not allow me to check out from the school library.

Fortunately, he was eventually voted off from the Texas State Board of Education. But, we still have too many right-wing creep-a-zoids on the board.

OK, because of the recent redistricting here in Texas, we've been holding a new election for board members.

I subscribe to the Texas Freedom Network and get daily Newsletters in my E-mails.

Yeah! This is a real hot-button issue for me.

Every time I hear of people wanting to control what we read, I feel like I'm getting my head bashed against the wall again, and again, and again!!!

Anyway . . . . .

My thanks to both of you guys, ChrisOH and Sportslover for posting a comment in response to my topic

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 7:02 pm
by Fitman's Brother
So, you admit you have brain damage? Why should we take one who doesn't have a fully functional brain seriously?

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2012 8:42 pm
by Fat Man
Fitman's Brother wrote:So, you admit you have brain damage? Why should we take one who doesn't have a fully functional brain seriously?
Yeah, I might have some brain damage which is why I have difficulty controlling my emotions, and I have issues with mental illness.

So, I'm crazy, but I'm not stupid! OK?

Here is a list of famous people and historical figures who suffered some form of mental illness.

OK, this will probably be too long for you to read, so you should just stick to first grade level McGuffey Readers. OK?

Information about famous people throughout history
who have had a serious mental illness.


Abraham Lincoln
The revered sixteenth President of the United States suffered from severe and incapacitating depressions that occasionally led to thoughts of suicide, as documented in numerous biographies by Carl Sandburg.

Virginia Woolf
The British novelist who wrote To the Lighthouse and Orlando experienced the mood swings of bipolar disorder characterized by feverish periods of writing and weeks immersed in gloom. Her story is discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr.

Lionel Aldridge
A defensive end for Vince Lombardi's legendary Green Bay Packers of the 1960's, Aldridge played in two Super Bowls. In the 1970's, he suffered from schizophrenia and was homeless for two and a half years. Until his death in 1998, he gave inspirational talks on his battle against paranoid schizophrenia. His story is the story of numerous newspaper articles.

Eugene O'Neill
The famous playwright, author of Long Day's Journey Into Night and Ah, Wilderness!, suffered from clinical depression, as documented in Eugene O'Neill by Olivia E. Coolidge.

Ludwig van Beethoven
The brilliant composer experienced bipolar disorder, as documented in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb.

Gaetano Donizetti
The famous opera singer suffered from bipolar disorder, as documented in Donizetti and the World Opera in Italy, Paris and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century by Herbert Weinstock.

Robert Schumann
The "inspired poet of human suffering" experienced bipolar disorder, as discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr.

Leo Tolstoy
Author of War and Peace, Tolstoy revealed the extent of his own mental illness in the memoir Confession. His experiences is also discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Inner World of Mental Illness: A Series of First Person Accounts of What It Was Like by Bert Kaplan.

Vaslov Nijinsky
The dancer's battle with schizophrenia is documented in his autobiography, The Diary of Vaslov Nijinksy.

John Keats
The renowned poet's mental illness is documented in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Broken Brain: The biological Revolution in Psychiatry by Nancy Andreasen, M.D.

Tennessee Williams
The playwright gave a personal account of his struggle with clinical depression in his own Memoirs. His experience is also documented in Five O'Clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just, 1948-1982; The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams by Donald Spoto, and Tennessee: Cry of the Heart by Dotson.

Vincent Van Gogh
The celebrated artist's bipolar disorder is discussed in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb and Dear Theo, The Autobiography of Van Gogh.

Isaac Newton
The scientist's mental illness is discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb.

Ernest Hemingway
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist's suicidal depression is examined in the True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Ernest Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him by Denis Brian.

Sylvia Plath
The poet and novelist ended her lifelong struggle with clinical depresion by taking own life, as reported in A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath by nancy Hunter-Steiner.

Michelangelo
The mental illness of one of the world's greatest artistic geniuses is discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr.

Winston Churchill
"Had he been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation. In 1940, when all the odds were against Britain, a leader of sober judgment might well have concluded that we were finished," wrote Anthony Storr about Churchill's bipolar disorder in Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind.

Vivien Leigh
The Gone with the Wind star suffered from mental illness, as documented in Vivien Leigh: A Biography by Ann Edwards.

Jimmy Piersall
The baseball player for the Boston Red Sox who suffered from bipolar disorder detailed his experience in The Truth Hurts.

Patty Duke
The Academy Award-winning actress told of her bipolar disorder in her autobiography and made-for-TV move Call Me Anna and A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness, co-authored by Gloria Hochman.

Charles Dickens
One of the greatest authors in the English language suffered from clinical depression, as documented in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb, and Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson.

Here's another more extensive list.

Abraham Lincoln (president - USA)
Al Kasha (songwriter)
Alanis Morisette (singer)
Alfred Lord Tennyson (poet)
Ann Wilson (singer)
Anne Tyler (author)
Anthony Hopkins (actor)
Aretha Franklin (singer)
Barbara Bush (former First Lady - U.S.)
Barbara Gordon (filmmaker)
Barbra Streisand (singer)
Beverly Johnson (supermodel)
Bonnie Raitt (musician)
Burt Reynolds (actor)
Carly Simon (singer)
Charles Schultz (cartoonist)
Charlotte Bronte (author)
Cher (singer, actress)
Courtney Love (singer - actress)
Dave Stewart of the (singer â?? Eurythmics)
David Bowie (singer)
Dean Cain (actor)
Deanna Carter (singer)
Dick Clark (television personality)
Donny Osmond (actor)
Earl Campbell (Heisman Trophy winner)
Edie Falco (actress)
Edvard Munch (artist)
Emily Dickinson (poet)
Eric Clapton (musician)
Goldie Hawn
Howard Stern (king of media)
Howie Mandel (comic)
Isaac Asimov (author)
James Garner (actor)
Jim Eisenreich (baseball)
Joan Rivers (actress)
John Candy (comedian)
John Cougar Mellencamp (musician, actor)
John Madden (announcer)
John Steinbeck (author)
John Stuart Mill (philosopher)
Johnny Depp (actor)
Kim Basinger (actress)
Lani O'Grady (actress)
Leila Kenzle (actress)
Marie Osmond (entertainer)
Marty Ingels (comedian)
Michael Crichton (writer)
Michael English (Gospel artist)
Michael Jackson (singer)
Naomi Campbell (model)
Naomi Judd (singer)
Nicholas Cage (actor)
Nicole Kidman (actress)
Nikola Tesla (inventor) Thanks to him, our homes are wired with AC current instead of DC as Thomas Edison had advocated.
Olivia Hussey (actress)
Oprah Winfrey (host)
Pete Harnisch (baseball)
Ray Charles (musician)
Robert Burns (poet)
Robert McFarlane (former National Security Advisor - U.S.)
Robin Quivers (radio host)
Roseanne Barr (comedian)
Sally Field (actress)
Sam Shepard (playwright)
Shecky Greene (comedian)
Sheryl Crow (musician)
Sigmund Freud (psychiatrist) Yes, even he suffered from mental illness.
Sir Isaac Newton (scientist)
Sir Laurence Olivier (actor)
Sissy Spacek (actress)
Susan Powter (tv host)
Tom Snyder (host)
Tony Dow (actor director)
W.B. Yeats (poet)
Willard Scott (weatherman)
Winona Ryder (actress)

Back in 2003, my therapist diagnosed me as having severe depression, anxiety, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have had to deal with anxiety attacks and depression through out most of my life.

What would the world be like today of some the people listed above were not taken seriously?

Where would we be if, for Example: Isaac Newton, or Johannes Kepler (not listed here), Nikola Tesla were not taken seriously?

When one has been diagnosed with any kind of a mental illness, we have to put up with all kinds of prejudice from ignorant bigots like you!

It's harder to find a decent job, and we have to face discrimination in our schools!

And no, I don't go around thinking I'm Napoleon, nor do I hear voices in my head, or some shit like that.

So, you can just get those stereotypes out of your head right now, assuming you have a head, and not just a hat rack!

Of course, you're lucky! You'll never have to worry about suffering any kind of brain damage or mental illness, because, you don't even have a brain to get damaged!

So, you may just . . . . .

FUCK OFF!!!

Re: Sports Culture Or Sports Cult?

Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2012 5:35 am
by Earl
Here's an interesting observation from yours truly:

Suppose Fat Man and Fitman's Brother had encountered each other face to face, instead of posting comments in some website's forum -- say, at the Starbucks in El Paso, Texas, where Fat Man set up his telescope for the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. I believe their interaction would have been of a completely different nature. Fitman's Brother probably would have asked a question or two out of curiosity, and the two of them would have had a pleasant chat. Each would have seen the other as a full human being instead of words on a computer screen produced by the world of dancing electrons.

Of course, that's not the case here, sad to say. Truly it is sad, and there's nothing I as a moderator can do about it. :( Just a wistful comment from yours truly. :|