fpb | (no subject)

Entry tags:

hypocrisy,
sports

(no subject)

The loud American complaints about Chinese cheating in the Olympics would sound better if the US athletics establshment had not been a sink of doped iniquity for decades, leading to horrors such as the "flo-jo" so-called world record, which is still on the books, and finally to the disgrace and humiliation of Marion Jones and her contemporaries. This will leave on any other nation the usual impression that Americans really think that their cheating is nobler than other people's cheating. And what about the time it took to make steroids illegal in baseball?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You missed the parenthetical aside in my comment, I think.

If laws are broken, this is a matter for the state.

It is currently legal in the United States for a citizen to sell and obtain anabolic steroids, with a prescription. Possession is not punishable.

If an organization has rules prohibiting otherwise legal drugs - as Major League Baseball (TM) does, this is a private matter between the offender and that organization.

Where I come from ..

Where I come from we don't feel that the government should be a big ol' honking intrusion in the lives of a free citizenry. Where I come from sports are a game. A lucrative one, sure, but a game. Where I come from the government has better things to do that hale baseball players up in front of the national legislature and grill them about their alleged drug use.

Where I come from the Federal Government is a small institution perched on the banks of a minor river, far away.. People don't pay it much attention doings in the state capitol are more important and affect us more. In turn the government does not pay us much attention.

Where I come from, we don't feel that a citizen, or rather a big ol' honkin' organization such as the Italian Olympic Committee or the Italian Football Federation, should be free to defraud the citizen in the name of liberty. And if you think they should, you've got a weird notion of liberty. Get two things clear. First, this is about money, and lots of it. Nobody dopes to win at kiddiewinks. And second, doping kills. Your poster girl for Olympic success through chemistry, Florence Joyner, died of a heart attack at 37, and she is hardly the only doper to end up badly and much before their time.

Scientific doping was invented by the East Germans in the seventies, and a whole generation of East German athletes, especially women, have had their lives ruined to this day - those who survived. I have seen their stories, and they are about as miserable as anything can be. Then, as soon as the Berlin Wall came down, American universities and athletics clubs went on a buying spree in East Germany, deliberately buying up all the coaches who had learned how to cheat scientifically - at the price of the health of many of their athletes - under the most corrupt and nasty Communist tyranny of them all. What a triumph of the free market; let alone of that "virtue" which, according to George Washington, was necessary for a people to remain free.

In fact, let us simplify this. Do you think that fraud and the deliberate endangering of young people's health and future (a successful doping program must start when the athletes are fifteen or earlier) for the sake of money are part of a people's fundamental liberty, or do you think that such activities are criminal and must be suppressed by law? That is the only issue here. Anyone who dopes - Italian, American, Chinese - is a criminal. What is more, s/he is a suicide, date left unspecified. Read up on Marco Pantani.

Clearly this is a hot-button issue for you.

We disagree on this.

I find your tone disagreeable and strident.

I decline to discuss this further.

Good day, Sir.

How convenient. Yes, crime happens to be a hot button issue for me. You, on the other hand, do not wish to admit that certain American institutions have committed crimes, and committed them deliberately. Since the facts are undeniable, you fall into denying that the monstrous events symbolized by the corpse of Florence Joyner are criminal at all. That is a pretty hopeless case to try to make, and you do not help it by pretending that I am being weird in finding it important.

You are demonstrating a reading disability.

I simply with to stop discussing this. I wish to stop discussing this because I find your tone disagreeable.

Which, as I said, is a most convenient discovery when you have no good arguments.

You insist on being an ass and name calling. Please consider yourself de-friended.

Ooh, I am so hurt.

I didn't write that to hurt you, but out of politeness that you seem unable to return.

You wrote a few weeks ago that people had defriended you without notification, and you were wondering why.

In this case, at least, you know why: You are being rude and provocative and life is too short to deal with fug-heads.

You just yatter on and on after saying that you did not want to go on. AND YOU DO SO IN MY OWN LJ. AFTER TRYING TO TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT DO IN MY OWN BLOG.

You have an LJ of your own. If you have something to say, USE IT.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only