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Friday, September 2, 2016

Kaepernick, Part II: Remember, the quarter black is a quarterback


There's a whole other dynamic at work with Kaepernick which hasn't been discussed elsewhere: as a quarterback, he's a target for every vicious linebacker in professional football.

Football isn't as black-dominated as basketball, but look at this list of the top current linebackers in the NFL: 8 of the top 10, and all 5 honorable mentions, are black.

Now, put yourself in Kaepernick's shoes (his cleats, to be exact). What would you rather have these 275 pound linebackers think as they try to sack you:

(A) This light-skinned mofo thinks he's better than me -- I'm gonna break his neck.

Or:

(B), Colin's a righteous warrior who's down with the cause. I'm gonna do my job, then help the brother up.

Those linebackers are a lot scarier than the white scribes who criticize Kaepernick's lack of patriotism.

This may not have occurred to you before. Believe me, it's occurred to Colin.

45 comments:

Anonymous said...

John,

I knew that you'd get this right, in the way that no one else has. I'm responding esp. to what you said in the earlier post: "It's more just a desperate attempt to try to fit into a community in which he never really belonged, and with whom he's not entirely comfortable." So well put. That captures everything, really. But allow me to rant a bit.

1. I'm tired of the National Anthem at sporting events. I read in the NY Times that we started playing it at baseball games in 1942 - for obvious morale boosting purposes. Do we really need to listen to this dull, pompous song before every sporting event? I am a baseball fan. 162 fucking times per season....

2. The association of sports and the military is driving me crazy. Kaepernick sat last night, not because of that, but because of the racism issue.

3. This made me wonder: if he had sat because of he disagreed with the association of sports & the military - would I have felt as annoyed?

4. Honestly, no. Because I would have agreed with him about sports & the military, I would not have been as annoyed.

5. I would still have disagreed with his actions because--

6. He is a teammate, and an employee of a team, which is part of the NFL. I don't care whether he has a formal right to sit. IMO, it's bad form and selfish to do what you want to do because you have a right to do it.

7. People have forgotten all about that - the difference between "its' my right" and "is it wise" - does it accomplish your goals??

8. The pig socks. Pure exhibitionism. Should be fined, or benched until he dresses in team uniform. Baseball players have been ordered to change their damn shoelaces (by other players) if they are too showboat. Pig socks? This is obvious trolling.

9. Kaepernick's bio-mother, oh man, I have gone on a bit too long already. I'll get to her later. She infuriates me.

10. I'm serious - will this lead to the dissolution of America?

You did a great job on your Olympic coverage too, was too busy to comment. Yes - some Olympic athletes are better looking than today's actresses and models!

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
Thank you.

A couple responses:

1: Total agreement. When sports teams play the national anthem, it's a cheap sort of patriotism that doesn't cost them anything. And it sort of implies that the sporting event itself is somehow an exercise in patriotism, when in fact it's an exercise in exercise, and that's all.

2. Same dynamic as above sort of applies, except that it's nice to see the military honored, and this is actually a nice venue to do it at -- lots of exposure. Soldiers for the most part lead pretty humdrum, boring lives, and pro athletes lead relatively glamorous ones; it's nice to share a little of the glamour with real heroes.

8. I can pretty much guarantee you, Kaepernick is far more afraid of blacks then he is of the police, on whom he counts for protection. So he gave into his bigger fear and tried to ally himself with the people he's really scared of, so he doesn't have to be as afraid of them. Look at that new Afro hairdo, and his phony accent, it's all of a piece with those socks. He's trying to show solidarity with the brothers so that they don't ostracize (and possibly injure) him. There are a lot more blacks than police in those NFL locker rooms, and out on the playing field.

10. We seem to be falling apart already. Look at the way Obama and Lynch and Soros and BLM keep try to keep the mobs' anger at a fever pitch with misleading statistics and storylines. And the mob seems to always take the bait. And now, a backlash has arrived, witness the Donald Trump phenomenon, which is partly an expression of people being fed up with political correctness.

Steven said...

I don't know about American football but isn't quarterback the one position dominated by whites? Could that be another thing he is aware of?

I'm always interested to see what mixed race people look like, especially as you get down to 25%. In this picture he looks like a North African Arab, which makes sense as plenty of them are 0-30% black. He looks more caucasian than black but with enough blackness that you can see it. He wouldn't stand out in Egypt or Algeria.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=kaepernick&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=534&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwiE2f7A_fDOAhUHKMAKHcawAX0Q_AUIBygC#imgrc=yczdq8l7Zsq61M%3A

John Craig said...

Steven --
You're right, he wouldn't look out of place in one of those countries. Steve Sailer wrote a post recently in which he said that both Kaepernick and Ashton Eaton, the Olympic decathlon champ, both look as if they're from North Africa.

I always thought Obama looked sort of Egyptian.

I'm an example of that sort of genetic accident: I'm half-Asian, half-Anglo, I ended up looking vaguely Hispanic.

Steven said...

do you ever find that someone's perception of you changes or your status improves when find out you're half Asian and not hispanic? Anything like that.

I should read Steve Sailor more.


John Craig said...

Steven --
Good question. No, I've never really noticed that, to tell the truth. What I have noticed is that a lot of times, especially in the past, people will let their guard down a bit as soon as I open my mouth. When I was younger I looked as if I might have been some sort of miscreant, but when I don't sound the way I look, so I did notice people visibly relaxing after I'd start a conversation.

Anonymous said...

John,

I don't like associating sports with the military. We should honor the military in the right way - by (for example) turning D-Day into a national holiday, or something like that. I'm always struck by how other countries truly honor their veterans. We turn it into a vulgar show and forget the real deal.

In Britain, on Armistice Day, they have solemn commemorations everywhere, and people wear the red poppy. On Anzac Day (25 April) the Australians honor the dead of Gallipoli.

https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac-tradition/

We do nothing for our veterans except these empty stadium celebrations. We should come together as a nation and commemorate our D-Day veterans. But I guess there would always be someone to say that the Army then was segregated....

Back to Kaepernick, although I think he should be disciplined, I feel sorry for his lack of identity. This guy has never looked into his genetic parent's faces. His mother is a piece of work. She claims she was "destitute" when she gave him up, but she wasn't. Her parents have stated that they would have taken her in. She gave him up voluntarily. Now she won't get out of his life. She pursues him relentlessly in the media. making what should be private a public matter. Meanwhile she has an Instagram account in which she posts pictures of her younger 3 sons doing such earth shaking things as eating ice cream. She's a disgusting woman. I feel for him. He hasn't had it easy.

Meanwhile, he's grown out a ridiculous Afro so that no one can mistake his ethnicity. Change your picture of him.

We have been falling apart for a long time, but the pace seems to be accelerating.

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
Well, we do have both Memorial Day in May and Veteran's Day in November, though, whenever you have a holiday every year, it inevitably develops a sort of pro forma feel. If we made D-Day into a third holiday, the same thing would happen. My feeling is, the various sports organizations shouldn't be basking in the reflected glory of the military, but whoever wants to honor the veterans should be encouraged to do so. And one thing about an NFL team doing so, at least it's a little different and a lot of people are tuned into their TV's. How many people actually show up for the local Memorial Day parade? (I don't.)

Here's a thought: maybe each year they should put the emphasis on a different group of veterans, with a little publicity about the hardships those particular veterans faced. (Which, during Viet Nam, included coming back to a hostile country.)

Bottom line on Kaepernick: he's a jerk, and has never bothered to understand the statistics on black deaths, undoubtedly, but you have to feel sort of sorry for him at the same time. He's desperately trying to carve out a (new) identity for himself, and desperately trying to fit into that new community. He knows from experience that white people he meets for the first time see him as black, i.e. "the other," so he's not one of them, despite having been brought up by white parents. And what with the NFL being 60% black, he wants to have a home.....sorta. The problem is, he's now angered the various owners, and it's going to be harder for him to land on a team in the future if he gets cut by the Forty-Niners.

Wow, his mother does sound like a piece of work. I hadn't known anything about her, until reading your description of her. (And now you have to feel even sorrier for him.)

That Afro is part of his new identity, just like that faux-black accent of his. The reason I chose the picture I did is because he looks scared in it, and that was the point I wanted to emphasize in this post: that he's scared of all those black linebackers (as anyone would be).

Anonymous said...

I think his problems come from his being abandoned and given up. Is Shane Battier like this? No, and he's half black as well, and weirder looking than Colin because he's so tall.

His mother is worse than I've indicated. She is a true horror. She is NOT "Colin's Mom." I feel for his adoptive parents. They must feel very betrayed. This can happen with birth children but eventually, birth children return to their nest. In this case, I think they sunk a lot of resources into a child who doesn't care about them, maybe even resents them. Sad.

The new Colin:

http://blacksportsonline.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Colin-Kaepernick-Hair.jpg

It's a hoot, get a load of it.

***
Re: Memorial/Veteran's Days - these are so vague they are meaningless. Memorial Day, esp. is just a day off. No one does anything special on Veteran's Day. Compare & contrast with Anzac Day, which is truly holy.

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
True, but also not really a fair comparison with Battier, who was brought up by both of his biological parents. Plus he graduated h.s. with a 3.96 GPA and was an academic All-American at Duke. My guess is, Kaepernick is not close to being as smart, plus being adopted into a white family led to all sorts of psychological issues above and beyond just having been given up by his real mother.

Agree about how his adoptive parents, but in a way, the recent developments can't come as a complete surprise. They DID know him growing up, and his basic character wouldn't have changed since then, I'm sure some of these issues have been around for a while.

Mark Caplan said...

An article on ESPN's website says the practice of playing the national anthem before sporting events started with the 1918 World Series at the end of World War I. It probably made sense when athletes were white and patriotism was a given, but now that the athletes are predominantly black or Latino, it might be time to pick another tune, perhaps the "Black National Anthem" (Lift Every Voice and Sing) for basketball and football games and Quisqueyanos Valientes before baseball games. For opening night at the opera or symphony, the Star-Spangled Banner would still be appropriate.

John Craig said...

Mark --
Ha, I suppose those would be more appropriate. I wonder if any whites would sit those out.

Playing the national anthem does make sense during times of intense patriotism, which I suppose means during wartime, especially a world war. But it does seem a little like overkill to do it all the time, when it's just two domestic teams playing each other.

Anonymous said...

"True, but also not really a fair comparison with Battier, who was brought up by both of his biological parents. Plus he graduated h.s. with a 3.96 GPA and was an academic All-American at Duke. My guess is, Kaepernick is not close to being as smart, plus being adopted into a white family led to all sorts of psychological issues above and beyond just having been given up by his real mother. "

Why the but? You and I are saying the same thing. I agree with you about the identity issues 100%, and I think they spring from the fact that he was abandoned. (And genes - both parents were unstable to begin with.)

I dunno, I think that people can be very repressed, and parents can be very put on the rose-colored glasses when it comes to kids, esp. one they adopted.

One thing I've noticed about these Republican conservative race liberal families - the woman tends to be a complete ball buster, and the "dad" a real, well, cuck. I get that distinct feeling from the Kaepernicks.

It's funny how the attitude towards this has flipped 180 degrees in only a few years. Do you remember the movie The Blind Side, and how Republicans crowed about how liberal the Republican conservative Tuohy family was? All that bragging about how "we" aren't racists, we love black people, we adopt black kids! That has changed radically in the last two years. The alt-right meme that adopting a black kid may not be the greatest idea in the world has caught on.

I'm not with the alt-right on everything but on certain subjects, I think they tell the bitter truth.

Puzzled

PS Right about Battier, much smarter than Kaepernick. I cannot imagine Battier saying such cliched crap, and going after a BLM slut the way Kaepernick has. But I don't think that's especially black of him. His mother is a white woman with average intellect, but brassy, vulgar, and entitled. Sound familiar? Apples, trees?

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
You're right, I just reread your second to last comment, and I misinterpreted (I thought you were saying it in a Battier-did-it-why-can't-he spirit). So, yes, the "but" is misplaced.

You're absolutely right about the cuckservatives. There's something pathetic about a group of people who seem to be saying, "See? I'm not all that bad." Someone has to shake these people and explain to them, you don't have to be so defensive.

No question the alt-right represents a long overdue dose of reality.

I had no idea Kaepernick had a BLM girlfriend. He's certainly trying hard to burnish his new image.

Anonymous said...

Re: cucks, they are getting the shaking of their lives now. I don't think that they themselves will change but that doesn't matter. The rest of the world that surrounds them, has.

I remember when The Blind Side came out. There was so much that was wrong about the movie, from a white perspective, never mind black, and I couldn't put words to it. Now I can.

Like I said I'm not really an alt-righter - I agree w/you that the original civil rights movement was a just cause - but they are breaking the racial taboos that have grown up in the last few years, and I have to applaud that - even if sometimes it hurts.

I have a True Life anecdote. I was in a Starbucks yesterday and two women, one white and one black, encountered one another. Friendly encounter, I think they were acquaintances. I heard the word "Obama," and the black woman beamed and raised a fist in a black power salute. (Am I the only one who hates that salute?) The white woman responded, as if she was following a leader in one of those forced exercise sessions back in the old USSR, or Mao's China. I wasn't listening carefully but the exchange was clearly in solidarity.

I occasionally read The New Yorker, which a neighbor discards. They ADORE Obama. The amount of Obama worship on even the moderate left is astonishing. The article I am thinking of specifically was written by David Remnick, and he actually referred to Obama as "The Big Cat."

Hillary inspires no such love. I hope she loses, but even if she wins, I predict that the alt-right will make gains. The left will completely fall apart in a Hillary Regency. It's a hodgepodge of conflicting ideas held together by a Big Leader, and when he goes, Yugoslavia the US falls apart. (That's my opinion - with Trump the white middle class gets a soft landing to 2nd power status. With Hillary, chaos. I'm too sedate and middle class to want disaster, although it has its benefits.)

Puzzled

Anonymous said...

Kaepernick gf:

http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/31/kaepernicks-support-of-black-lives-matter-began-after-dating-activist-dj/

P

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
Yes, the evolution of thinking and speech over the last few years has been extremely gratifying, and in large part it's thanks to the internet. I'm certainly not the first to say this, but the freedom and anonymity of the internet ha allowed people to speak their minds, and a lot of taboos have been broken. People are speaking much more honestly about race, and once the floodgates on something like that burst open, there's no stopping the torrent of information that comes out. It's been good for another reason: for decades now, people have been taught that they're evil if they notice racial differences, and now that they see that they're not alone in thinking what they've been thinking, it reassures them and sometimes gives THEM the courage to speak truthfully about racial differences and the like. So publications like the NY Times and its ilk look sillier and sillier as they recycle the old liberal bromides about who is to blame of the current mess.

That Starbucks episode you describe is telling on a number of levels. The uninhibitedness of the black woman in making the black power salute to a white person, the black woman's assumption that the white would play along, the white woman's willing acquiescence in her own effective subjugation. Bill Clinton's having said that he was looking forward to the day when whites were a minority in the US was a metaphor for so much of what modern liberalism has stood for.

And yeah, no question, President Hillary would spark a backlash. But whether or not she gets elected, the alt-right is here to stay. (BTW, like you, I'm not fully on board with it either, but I do appreciate the fact that they generally disseminate the truth, as opposed to the lies and propaganda of the Left.)

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
PS -- Ah yes, the evil influence of a woman! You had mentioned that he had a BLM girlfriend, I hadn't realized that his activism dated from when he started dating her. It all makes even more sense now.

Blue said...

@Anon

"Hillary inspires no such love. I hope she loses"

Off topic but you know about the Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein right. I'm not a fan of the green party at all but when you look at a picture of Stein compared to Clinton, you can see the warmth in Stein's eyes. Like actually looking at the eyes of your "loving grandmother". Bernie Sanders had those "loving grandfather" eyes too.

When I look at Hillary's picture, I just see the eyes of a cold and calculating sociopath. I'm not sure how so many feel a connection to Clinton.

John Craig said...

Blue --
Just checked her out. Looks can be deceiving, but Stein is a nice-looking woman with a nice smile. Not sure I agree that Bernie looked like a loving grandfather, though; although I respect him -- while disagreeing with him -- he looked more like a cantankerous grandfather to me.

Definitely agree with you about Hillary.

Anonymous said...

I know who Jill Stein is. For a 65 year old she is very attractive. I admire that she embraces the gray and has kept fit. Hillary OTOH dies her hair blonde because she is insecure about her looks (which aren't bad) and has become overweight & unfit.

Trump is right to harp on the health issue. I sense that in the past week, as he went up in the polls, that people have become more concerned about that.

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
Hillary was unattractive when young, and completely unattractive now. But I've seen pictures of her when she was the First Lady of Arkansas that made her look quite pretty.

No question she has some serious health issues. The press won't say a thing about it, but my understanding is that she'll have two days where she does absolutely nothing, then make a few scheduled appearances, then disappear again. And every public appearance she makes is carefully orchestrated. She's well past retirement age, biologically if not chronologically.

Anonymous said...

I don't know, I've seen lots of pics of Hill when she was young, and she was kind of pretty. As First Lady of Arkansas she looked her best because she was down south where people expect ladies to groom (or used to), and was competing w/Gennifer Flowers. She is not fit to be President - in every sense of the word.

Now that Jill Stein is really an example of successful aging. I suspect that she's been a looker all her life (good features), but she's an example of how keeping slim and not dying your hair is attractive:

https://d229l5sflpl9cp.cloudfront.net/canphoto/35775_lg.jpg

Puzz'd

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
In my 1:52 comment I started out by saying, "Yeah, I'd do her," but then I erased it because it was sort of inappropriate for the blog. But this time.....I seem to have let it slip through.

Anyway, now that we've established my piggishness, agreed, staying slim is key. I think older women can be quite attractive as long as they've done that. Amazing, though, how few bother.

(And yes, I know, few men stay slim, as well.)

Anonymous said...

John,

LOL. It's your blog.

Anyway back to Kaepernick, this is just another in a series that illustrates to me how hopeless black/white relations are in this country. It's never ending. I'm not one of those who think there is going to be a final end point*, nor would I want one, but surely things must come to a head at some point?

Examples. I said I am a baseball fan. Baseball players have a very rigid self-policing code, too rigid IMO but I am not a baseball player. I mentioned once Jayson Werth, a veteran player. He saw a rookie wear a pair of green shoelaces and told the kid to take them off & replace them w/regulation laces. The kid did so. He was a Stanford grad white boy. I think Werth was being a dick, but my opinions are meaningless. I do think that having a rigid code of self-policed behavior is ultimately a good thing, so even if Werth was being a dick, it's for a good cause.

What do you think would have happened if the kid had been black?

The NY Mets have a young pitcher on their staff who ate lunch while the team was having an intra-squad workout. Upon learning this, two older players went into the clubhouse, dumped his sandwich & utensils in the trash -- and chewed him out in public. This became a minor issue in the sports press last season. The older guys were white and the kid pitcher is white.

What do you think would happen if the kid pitcher was black? You know damn well - if he didn't make race an issue, the press sure would have. And now we have an army of tweeting psychos who magnify everything to massive proportions.

At some point this tension will come to a head. I think that football is just the arena for it to be played out, because football is truly our national religion. Some conservative thinker called the football season our true liturgical calendar.

Last year, when Beyonce did her Black Panther/Black Lives Matter act during Superbowl halftime, the alt-right was scandalized (as I was) - but the alt-right was nothing then. It's grown by leaps and bounds, helped by circumstances & Hillary. Things have changed. There's a general racial un-cucking going on. At some point things must come to a head.

But that's me, what do you think?

Puzzled

*I almost wrote solution but stopped, oh wait, I did it

Anonymous said...

Pardon me for going a bit OT but here is a book you might want to take a look at:

https://www.amazon.com/Seoul-Man-Unexpected-Hilarity-Corporate/dp/0062405241?tag=nypost-20

I am going to order it from the library. I wonder if he's honest that not only was he in an alien culture, he was in a racially alien culture.

Scroll down to the comment by Sandra, where she contradicts herself:

"He knows full well the meaning of life, his quest did not end with self absorption, regrets or yearnings for bigger and better things. I loved the accounts of his interactions with the Koreans - they work hard, they are terribly loyal and they do it all for a better life for themselves and their families. So their foreign culture isn't so foreign after all."

Doesn't her observation about self-absorption, hard work, and loyalty belie her claim that the Koreans aren't foreign? Is she not admitting that modern Americans are self-absorbed, lazy, and have frayed family ties, and seeing the fanaticism of the Koreans in these matters was jarring and shaming to the author?

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
Every day we see more examples of what-if-the-races-were-reversed situations that scream out about the hypocrisy about race in this country, but most people keep their blinders firmly on. (These examples have actually been commonplace for decades.) However, as you point out, the rise of the alt-right has finally gotten us to a point where we're finally having that "honest national dialogue about race" that Bill Clinton and Eric Holder wanted us to have. Well, maybe not exactly the one THEY wanted, but a dialogue nonetheless. (All they wanted, of course, was a one-sided diatribe about white privilege and the legacy of slavery.)

What do I think? I'm not sure that "this tension will come to a head" entails. Race war? I used to think that people who said there would be a race war were absolutely insane (Charlie Manson first predicted this back in the 60's). Now, I'm not quite as sure. In a way, there's been a one-sided low level race war going on for decades. (Just look at the crime statistics, the interracial crime statistics in particular.)

I do think that no amicable, peaceful solution will be arrived at without a brutally honest look at racial differences. All of the lies that the Left feeds us, for instance, that anybody who recognizes racial differences in IQ is evil, can not possibly lead to a happy solution to our current problems.

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
The NY Post actually just did a mini-review of that book yesterday:

http://nypost.com/2016/09/03/the-boozy-narcissistic-culture-shock-of-working-in-south-korea/

Their emphasis was on the South Koreans' penchant for plastic surgery (which is far, far more common than in the US) and their (somewhat opposing) penchant for heavy drinking. What stood out to me was the following quote:

“Job applicants know that in Korea, as everywhere in the world, the better-looking of two equally qualified job seekers will likely get the position. So instead of being hypocritical, as Koreans would say Americans are by pretending looks don’t matter, Koreans understand the system and try to succeed within it . . . to not choose plastic surgery, if it will improve your employment and life prospects, would be considered . . . ill-advised.”

I know this makes me sound superficial, but I completely agree with that philosophy. Good-looking people DO get preference in hiring, in the US as well as elsewhere. So why NOT try to improve your looks? The Koreans are right: Americans are simply hypocritical when it comes to this topic. Denying the importance of looks is just dishonesty.

To answer your question about Sandra, I think what she was saying is that most Americans pay lip service to (and a few Americans actually practice) the values that South Koreans practice as a matter of course. So, yes and no. (I find it easier to be wishy washy at times.)

Anonymous said...

"I do think that no amicable, peaceful solution will be arrived at without a brutally honest look at racial differences."

And that ain't gonna happen. So where does that leave us? I see us just treading water forever, which is no big deal, until a flood comes.

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
I agree that no good solution looms on the horizon. But at least the alt-right has gained a foothold, which means a little honesty has been introduced to the discussion.

Anonymous said...

Judging people by their appearance isn't superficial, although I think what the Koreans do is extreme. Their plastic surgeries have the goal of making people look more Western. I've seen this with Japanese and I think it's really disgusting.

It's also unfair to judge someone because they aren't conventionally pretty.

BUT, it's totally fair to judge someone by their grooming habits, which make an enormous difference in their looks.

What's really unfair: judging someone by height, which falls on men much more than women. It's better to be a 6'2" woman than a 5'2" man. Feminists bitch & moan about the unfairness of looksism, but the most brutal form of looksism is heightism, and the brunt of it falls on the short guy.

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
We're really talking about two different things here: fairness, and reality. It's completely unfair to judge anyone on any aspect of their physicality that they have no control over. At the same time, the fact is, we're all swayed by someone's appearance: height, weight, facial features, fitness, etc. And to deny the latter is just to be dishonest.

And, really, what's the difference between trying to look your best through diet and exercise and grooming, vs. looking your best through plastic surgery? It's just a matter of degree, and to draw the line somewhere and declare oneself morally superior because one has stayed on this side of an arbitrary line seems to be splitting hairs. When I was young women who dyed their hair were considered -- by some people -- to be Jezebels, the vainest of the vain, and incredible shallow and superficial. Nowadays it's commonplace.

Really, what's the diff?

Anonymous said...

None, I totally agree w/you. The only time you shouldn't do plastic surgery is when it goes too far, as is the case with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton. In fact I'll go as far as saying that if you can afford plastic surgery, or your insurance covers it, and you have a feature that is distracting, you should go for it. But this doesn't apply to short men. There's nothing they can do about their problem.

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
Absolutely, there are plenty of cautionary tales (and I wouldn't even list Jane Fonda among them): Michael Jackson, that infamous "Cat Lady," Dolly Parton (agreed), Meg Ryan, etc. Just Google "bad plastic surgery" and you'll see lots of examples.

True, not much that can be done about height.

Anonymous said...

Megan Rapinoe knelt during the anthem during a soccer game to "keep the conversation going."

Jesus fuck, can't these people for one second stop being so cliched? "Keep the conversation going"????

I didn't know they had women's soccer games on a regular basis. Because no one outside of the player's relatives gives a shit about women's soccer. They ought to allow betting, like horse races. Did you read that a boy's team in UK beat the Australian national team? An UNDER 15 TEAM:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3609949/Matildas-lose-7-0-Newcastle-Jets-15s-Rio-Olympics-warm-up.html

I'm so sick of all this shit, John, which is why I'm using obscenities. Women's soccer is shit. Women's tennis is shit. Megan Rapinoe is a useless showoff. She plays in a subsidized "sport" that no one gives a fuck about, and could be beaten by a 14 year old boy. Colin Kaepernick is a spoiled, entitled little scumbag. He should break rocks in a labor camp for 5 years.

You know something John? Sometimes I really do wish this society would come crashing down. Except that I'm invested in it, and I'd be cutting off my nose to spite my face.

Have a nice day.

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
coincidentally, I just saw tat about Megan Rapine about half an hour ago. I wasn't surprised when I heard about the outcome of that game. The fast 15-year-old boy swimmers regularly go under the women's world records, and I'm sure the same is true for track. I remember hearing once that the 15-year old Usain Bolt had run 200 meters in 20.2.

Of course, I can't talk, I compete in a restricted division too, masters athletics (where your handicap is your age, not your sex).

The god news about all this seems to be that the pendulum has swung as far as it's going to, and in fact has already started to swing back the other way, thanks to the internet.

Anonymous said...

There's more, John: Obama has weighed in on Kaepernick's side!!

https://nypost.com/2016/09/05/obama-defends-kaepernicks-national-anthem-protest/

In fairness to Obama, he was asked a question. But he encourages this. He obviously LOVES to be asked these questions. True to form, he responded with the "conversation" bullshit. They all read from the same playbook.

I can't tell you how much I despise Obama. This is totally a matter of style, as I happen to agree w/him on certain matters of substance. But at a certain point I think style becomes substance. He's not the president of the United States, he's the god of the disunited states that used to make up America. I hate him and everything he stands for.

But unlike you I don't believe that the pendulum has swung as far as it can, and that it will swing back. My analogy is the bottomless pit of depravity and insanity. Time mag just featured an article about a lunatic "transman" who "transitioned" back to female to have a baby, whom "he" is now "chestfeeding." Who could have predicted this 10 years ago? I predicted gay marriage, I never predicted this.

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --

What people don't realize is that Obama IS Kaepernick. They're both half white (okay, Kaepernick is roughly three-quarters white), both brought up in white families, and both have striven mightily to prove their blackness. I wonder what Obama secretly thinks of Kaepernick, if he's embarrassed by him, if he consciously sees how much Kaepernick is like him.

I despise Obama too, for being a con man. It's just his nature to be slippery and dishonest.

As far as the pendulum goes, certain people will do their best to keep it stuck at the far Left edge of its arc, but there are a lot of people who are seeing the light and riding their own pendulum back in the other direction, people who maybe weren't so political ten years ago but have been politicized by constantly being told how racist they are and how much they benefit from white privilege.

Anonymous said...

"What people don't realize is that Obama IS Kaepernick."

Hah. You're right. Hope you're right about that pendulum thing too, although I have my doubts. We'll just have to stay tuned & see.

Anonymous said...

Wow, I found this during my daily trash trawl. It's slightly on topic as it involves a 49er:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3775021/Football-player-Bruce-Miller-released-49ers-arrested-attacking-70-year-old-man-son-hotel.html

A white football thug! They cut him. I predict he will be destitute & demented in 2 years.

Puzzled

Blue said...

"Women's soccer is shit. Women's tennis is shit. Megan Rapinoe is a useless showoff. She plays in a subsidized "sport" that no one gives a fuck about, and could be beaten by a 14 year old boy."

Women's sports might start getting more interesting during this transgender fad. Female sports teams might start recruiting more "ladies with dicks" who would suck on the men's teams but excel on the women's teams. You could see it start to happen in the Olympics that just passed.

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
Wow.....sounds as if he's already demented. Sometimes steroids play a role in that kind of behavior.

John Craig said...

Blue --
Ugh, what a nightmare that would be. The women's 800 meter run at the Olympics was sort of a travesty, I assume you're referring to that, I wrote about it when it happened. If we see more stuff like that it will undoubtedly discourage girls from going into sports, which would be a shame.

Anonymous said...

Another take on Kaepernick:

http://freetheanimal.com/2016/08/francisco-kaepernick-employee.html

Very well done. Makes some points about the place of pro football in America that I hadn't seen elsewhere.

Puzzled

John Craig said...

Puzzled --
Yes, thank you, he hit some interesting points.