Ohio matters, and other news
This is good news if true, because Obama has not been so very popular in Ohio lately. Ohio does seem to be a vital state in presidential elections, especially close ones: remember 2004? Here’s a 2009 article that discusses the importance Ohio has played historically in presidential elections.
And here’s some bad news on a different (although not utterly unrelated) topic.
And remember this event that occurred forty years ago (completely unrelated, I might add)? I do. You might have noticed that I’ve never written an article about boxing. That’s no accident; it’s a sport I can’t stand. Your mileage may differ.
I like the sport of boxing. The business of boxing has done more than its share of giving the sport a bad image. I still have the Life magazine that came out a few days after that Ali-Frazier fight with some great photos of it.
Neo just think of it as contact ballet. 🙂
Besides the economy, Mr. O has another major problem, he now has a record. He’s no longer a tabula rasa upon which to fill in with your naive hopes and dreams. Go Ohio! Go Wisconsin!
it’s a sport I can’t stand. Your mileage may differ.
[Just a sarcastic lesson to some intro-exo-spection… ]
To those that do not understand boxing…
[But might want to]
Why does Boxing get this judgmental view? What sets it apart?
Is it that pets shouldn’t be given proper means and other things so that they can act out certain natural inclinations they were made for, and we humans like to believe we weren’t made for anything, but have a fixed mental state that is added to every form and is of equal capacity?
Should we all judge what people do voluntarily and express our disdain in some way and not look at it from the participant’s perspective, when it’s a sport with an old history? (I will leave things like Mapplethorpe’s art work to another day, and another domain of inquiry and reaction). [funny how word does not know misandry, but does know to correct Mapplethorpe… ]
Where did one get such a perspective? From some past ghost/s who gave it to you. Did you see it and decide to judge it on its surface? Did feminism teach you to reflexively be repulsed from pure masculine acts? Was it a bad experience? Is it a judgment of the surface and not well considered?
Why emphatic lack of respect as opposed to just passing disinterest?
Why the influential clarity?
Is it the Mrs Grundy inside?
[I am not referring to Archie comics — but Thomas Morton]
Kind of odd from a person who likes Ballet, Opera, and all the stuff that is a product of Aristocratic war and privilege… You realize those big harps are battle harps? You know that the bag pipe, is a battle horn?
By the same token women should not breast feed, or even act like women, after all, that’s what they USED to do when they were animals and not modern secular humans domesticated properly.
You might notice that this parallels the ‘progressive’ view impressed from early school onward (and if you look it up, feminists go so far as to be upset that women have to give birth, and say that they shouldn’t have to)
I am curious if it’s all fighting? All MALE based sports? How are you with karate, kung fu, and the other martial arts? How about Sumo wrestling? Are they OK because they are not western?
How about western wrestling? Iron man competition? Iditerod? How about the Kyber toss? Wife carrying races? Javelin? Cheerleading (is it a sport)?
Are they just as reprehensible?
If they are not reprehensible, and somewhat more acceptable, can you let me know why?
I warn you.. You will find it hard to give a reason that only applies to boxing, or not. Whatever you may argue on the others, also applies to boxing… (and even most sports on some level)
Martial arts for education and self discipline? Cant use that one, that’s boxing too. For exercise? Boxing too (my female dentist likes to box, but never hits anyone).
Because Kung Fu practiced by priests? Then discuss it with Father Max Pusceddu.
Its an ancient practice in the east? Well boxing is just as old in the west…
I am curious as to what would be a reason why one would express that you “can’t stand” it and why you would not be able to see the sport in it along with other sports? “cant stand” is different than disinterested, not your think, enjoy other things more, etc… you would think two things too if a client said he didn’t care much for his brothers new wife, and he said he cant stand her… no?
Can’t say it’s because of pain, or injury, other sports offer more, and it’s very rare a boxer dies in the ring… (Not so rare for boat racing, and car racing) football players break more bones, and gymnasts suffer more paralyzing permanent injuries. Lifetime soccer suffers similar brain damage. The others might not be televised as much so you wont see them, and can imagine some difference.
What about women boxers (no not the ones in bra’s from the 50s)?
Money the reason? MOST boxing is not big money… most is little guys trying to score points… they can’t even do that much damage (comparatively). Big money is giants like me fighting another giant. I am 6’3″ and 5 lbs heavier than mike Tyson… which puts me in the top weight class… ie, no real limit…
The weight classes are very tight… that is, there is not even 10 lbs between them, until you get to heavy weight. And there are women’s weight classes just for them.
There are now 17 classes of weight for men…
From Straw weight to heavy weight (and their used to be super heavy), and a lot of them are only 4 lbs apart… they say size don’t matter, but in truth, boxing shows that it does.
There are so many weight classes so that the fights are very even.
Emasculation and dilution… which is the social message…
[ie. deny the men anything that is theirs!]
I don’t want to hear a litany as to the evils of boxing, I would prefer to hear why its judged differently, and what ruler is being used which doesn’t apply to other sports which are acceptable. (or more likely, out of mind and consideration).
This is good news if true, because Obama has not been so very popular in Ohio lately. Ohio does seem to be a vital state in presidential elections, especially close ones: remember 2004?
UK Daily Mail
AND…
Suspects include financial enemies in Middle Eastern states, Islamic terrorists, hostile members of the Chinese military, or government and organized crime groups in Russia, Venezuela or Iran. Chinese military officials publicly have suggested using economic warfare against the U.S.
the left leaders think they were picked as the smart and right people to act.. (to them the truth is always opposite)
personally… if there are games like this going on and more.. whatever analysis you have in your pocket from the past, is irrelevant.
what stunt will be pulled coming up…
you realize that they dont think they will get a leader like this again as their opposition…
another article links the timing to the events of the election… oops
Artfldgr,
I agree with most of your points. Still, I submit that you’re conflating intellectual analysis of the sport with like/dislike (which is, in essence an emotional response).
One can appreciate the importance of many things and like or dislike them for virtually any reason, logical or not.
T,
Actually i am not, i am only asking questions. its their answers that would either be honest or conflate. 🙂
Artfldgr: when I say I can’t stand boxing, I mean I can’t stand to watch it. I’m not campaigning against it. But I personally hate to spend my time watching people hit each other, even if they do it with skill and athleticism. Don’t like violent movies either or watching people beat each other up, even when they’re pretending.
I also can’t stand to watch football and ice hockey. Basketball used to be of interest decades ago, but now I find it boring. Baseball is the only spectator sport I enjoy, although I used to like tennis. I think I like both because I used to like to play tennis and know how, and my son used to play baseball and that’s when I got into it, when I learned the finer points of the game while a captive audience as a parent.
Just not much of a sports spectator.
Artfldgr,
Disagree. Yes, you ask questions, but provide limitations as to the answer
“I warn you.. You will find it hard to give a reason that only applies to boxing. . . .”
“Can’t say it’s because of pain, or injury. . . .”
“I don’t want to hear a litany as to the evils . . . .”
Now let me try. When you respond, I don;t want you to respond to each of these points. I don’t want to hear a litany of how my remarks don’t address your thesis, etc.
I am not a boxing opponent, but I can understand why some would not like it; I am not a hunter, but I can understand how some might like to hunt.
Again I submit that your questions are an attempt to logically dissect an antipathy to boxing. Nothing wrong with that, but such an antipathy is inherently an emotional response. It need not be logical.
I get memories, so i love hockey, but dislike boxing or rather dislike watching it.
and to T the limits i put had to do with disliking boxing, but not kung fu.. and those were examples… in that if you are going to argue that you hate X, is it X in total, or X in context, or irrational X?
in other words, it was an example to say pain and then point out that BOTH have pain. or to call out that its because of blood, as others have more. and so on down the line, until you get to some reason that has some meaning that isnt negated by other things.
neo tends to dislike it in total/general
i tend to not care for it in context
(but do at least understand things unlike a lot of other people you hear comment on things)
the examples i was giving, was so we can avoid the most common irrationals…
and as far as it being emotional, thats fine…
nothing wrong with that… so i am not implying there is… but there is not much meat on the bones of such… (until they try to rationalize the emotional position they have rather than admit thats the position).
basically honest answers pass, and its the dishonest ones that would be more interesting
I don’t disagree, yet it still seems to me that you are hunting for a logical explanation to a feeling. To wit: I am not a hunter. I dislike hunting (for myself) and have never hunted. Yet, I am a hard-core carnivore; I like ot eat meat. Now, if you ask me for a logical explanation, I can’t give you one. If you charged me as a hypocrite on this particulr subject, I would have to respond “guilty.”
But none of those responses will get me to either start hunting or stop eating meat; my point is that it is illogical on its face and defies logical dissection. Sometimes we just have to accept the illogical, it doesn’t necessaruly mean that we are simply lacking in knowledge.
As for Neoneocon, she simply indicated her dislike for the sport; there needn’t be a reason why.
I think boxing was the very first sport.
It started when two men agreed, “We will fight, but not to the death.” Thus was sport born.
Baseball is the only sport I’ve ever cared about.
rickl,
then you must know the George Carlin Baseball v Football routine. Sheer genius; Carlin at his best.
And my analogy to the pet or the breast feeding is that for guys, that kind of behavior is normal. not breast feeding, but doing things that to the women seem violent.
Guys tend to see intent as key to violent. if you walk away, or limp away, and your friends, and do it every week, other than appearance and moves, hows it really violent?
the hurt you feel is ok.. i guess. hard to explain, as i have had hurt playing such games that was definitely not ok. 🙂 at one time i lived hockey, foot, ice, and concrete skate hockey. I liked football, but hockey was rougher in a different way. broke my nose in hockey and that was violent since it was intentional, which is why my response was not very sporting.
in many of these sports, the violence that could make it end in a very bad way, or with lasting damage is removed. a kind of serious method acting with limits and a purpose other than a fake script.
outside of secular domesticated human existence, men were made for a purpose, and all those kinds of things are a way to be healthy and have that purpose, but not have it cost society cohesion, and actually accomplish the opposite, teamwork.
men were made to interface with the world directly and create a buffer of safety for selected others. the more competent they were, the better that buffer. women selected men for that coin. women were made to interface with others inside a common such buffer zone of relative safety in community.
it was only quite recently in human history that women were relatively safe going anywhere they pleased… the good had yet to tame the bad which are now turning the tables.
women like to shop long.. they like to wander aisles (trails), and see whats there. they may visit places more than once before they purchase, as if to wait till ripe. everything is laid out like bushes, and vines on walls, and trails. even funnier is that when they are not sharing the common shopping areas where they are combing for modern versions of roots, they want to go to special shopping places their girlfriends dont know about, and do so periodically.
for this though, they need their guy. why? because you see they are not going to go to the communal area, where its in the common safe zone. no, she is going to a special area, and thats not safe by yourself. there could be wild critters on the trails (aisles). and so she shleps along a boyfriend, or husband. he stands there.. she is not interested much in his opinion, he just sits on the chair provided by the store. he wants to do other things, there are no tigers at macys basement sales. but he cant, he has to follow her around, and stand there, just in case. if he dont, she will get upset. why? well thats the equivalent of abandoning her to the jackals.
but wait, the guys got theirs too. ever notice that guys decide what they want, they go in, get it, come out and thats it, they want to head home (or at least drop it in the car, and then go out). if her behavior reflects her gathering time, his must reflect his time before farming. so he is hunting. a hunter decides what game he is going to go after, he does not bring a swiss army knife of hunting. he knows what he wants. and a good hunter can get what he wants fast, not slow. so he wants to get to the place, get it, and then get home. because in a world where there is no refrigeration, getting the meat home as fast as you can is also as safe as can be.
she likes to talk.. perfect behavior to avoid bears… he likes to be quiet, perfect behavior for hunters…
the point is that some of the things we do, fit our old patterns. some more than others, some less. different mixes… some even switched around. life likes to test things out at the expense of the individual.
boxing and tough sports fill a kind of need in some and that some feel stronger than others, or cant proxy to something else (not that i suggest they should or shouldn’t, just musing on why it can vary and we all dont like to kick each other in the head all day).
there is so much we do that is not like that too, and ultimately, sometimes we learn not to care that our husband isnt with us, or when our wife is with us she has to detour to shop, even if not buying… (or has no shopping inclination at all).
maybe i am more a curious George than an artful dodger… 🙂
T Says:
March 8th, 2011 at 10:04 pm
Yeah, I’ve always liked Carlin, but it seemed to me that he was mocking baseball as a sissy sport in that routine.
I disagree, Carlin was a pacifist and I think he was actually praising it. Remember he called it a pastoral sport. That’s a compliment in my mind.
Artfldgr,
or maybe a Curious Dodger ?
I enjoyed your shopping/gathering parallel; I’ve been saying the same thing for years. Let me expand on that:
I work with a woman who became pregnant (apparently unintentionally). After she had the baby, she said she was relatively uneffected until she heard the baby cry for the first time. Her description was “I suddenly realized that this was the baby I never knew I wanted.”
Now for us guys, I don’t think we can ever comprehend that idea. Likewise, I’m sure many (most?) women can never understand the adrenalin rush a guy can get by watching a good boxing match. Perhaps they can’t understand the pleasure/need to fight (help, I’m hunting for a word here) because for women fighting is a last ditch effort.
As you point out, the men protect the women. If the women must fight, either the men are gone or they’ve failed to do their job. Then the women must fight, but by then it’s a last stand for the tribe. When you’re taking a last stand, there is you don’t jockey for position or locking horns until the loser walks away. The only rule is to win/survive.
sorry, last sentenceshould read
” . . . there is no jockeying for position or locking horns until the loser walks away. The only rule is to win/survive.”
Artfldgr- I’m not so sure about the more violent sports as a substitute for baser instincts. I never enjoyed street fights at all, whether I won or lost. I was a good wrestler though, and settled a lot of beefs with nobody really getting hurt. I think rickl is right about boxing and the birth of sports.
T- As to females . . .
I raised a son and four daughters, and my son and I both learned to duck when they got pissed!
Somehow boxing has become the subject of interest here, not the issues of the 2012 election or the sorry state of the national debit-deficit crisis. I find this curious because I don’t care who is or who is not muy mas macho in the boxing ring. Boxing, wrestling, or martial arts contests are merely sporting events because there are rules. In a real life struggle there are no rules, there is only the question of who lives to keep breathing the air and who ceases to breathe.
Parker writes *1:38 am above) that
“In a real life struggle there are no rules, there is only the question of who lives to keep breathing the air and who ceases to breathe,” and therein lies the problem.
The left has seen fit to make political discourse a “matter of survival” and that a win by any means strategy is in play. For them, this has, at least for the time being, trumped the rule of law.
Anyone who dislikes watching boxing should find a DVD of the Buster Douglas v. Mike Tyson battle and watch it all the way through. If you’re not on your feet yelling at the top of your lungs for Douglas by the end of the fight then you got no heart. Douglas was the biggest underdog there was. He was a tomato can that was supposed to have been kicked to the curb in round 1. Douglas’ mother had died the week before and he had dedicated the fight to her. Some how he tapped something down deep inside and pulled off possibly the biggest upset in sports history.
Trebucet, i agree that was an astonishing performance by Douglas. Probably the most mentally and physically focused boxer i’ve ever seen. But alas, it was only to be for that one night.
Practically every sport is a sublimation, imitation or metaphor of war – even such pacifist one as chess game. Ancient Greeks who invented it understood the connection quite well. And all our recreational hobbies are imitations or substitutions of some activity which was some time in a disrant past a vital one: fishing, hunting, mountain climbering, gathering collections of any items, from postage stamps to old cars. And working out at gym is imitation of physical labour, which not long ago was needed to survive. Our instincts need realization, and when way of life changes, we find a substitute.
papa Dan- I’m not so sure about the more violent sports as a substitute for baser instincts. I never enjoyed street fights at all, whether I won or lost.
well thats why my dislike is contextual… when i had to fight, it was near to the death given that it was inner city slums… kind of takes the fun out of it.
but my point wasnt that this is the one replacement… but that we DO have kinds of replacements which we DO enjoy and which we have formalized to the point that the original reason for them is apart from them in general.
more people today practice karate than really need it in their lives as a way to survive. unlike the shao lin monks who were adapting to laws and practices of their time to survive and defend weaker citizens who had not the time nor luxury to train…
you may not like boxing, but you may enjoy football. you might like raquet ball. or even darts…
all of them have these common components and feelings that we are desireous of.
taken another angle and these in a way are the original sins we battle to deal with (not erase or control or pretend dont exist)..
culture is an interface between the body and reality, a kind of filtering. better cultures do that in light with what is recieving the message, dysfunctional ones dont and most energy is wasted canceling out other energy rather than a productive direction.
in my points i did alow for the ends of the bellcurves, the outliers with different mixes of needs that are not the center of the curves.
the beauty of christian society was that all this was accepted as long as you were working towards abrogating the negatice and moving towards the positive. that since each was important and sacred, even those outliers are to be accepted and as long as what they want to do isnt harmful and ultimately destructive, we ignored it… (sometimes the destructive was ignored if it was kept within the bounds of the participants behind closed doors, as a compromise).
a pluralistic society is not one where everyone gets along because they are actually equal not just ideologically pretending equal. the idea that the unequal are equal before judgments and unequal in ability and what they can bring to the table IS pluralistic.
we are much less so now…
and to finish you off sergey…
when we are not allowed them we become mental cases, dysfunctional, and all kinds of agitated states without knowing why…
I am one of few guys who can’t stand boxing either.
I love football. I love playing and I love watching it.
I can’t stand when someone gets hurt. This happens in soccer, hockey, etc.
I can’t say much on the boxing because it’d give people information as to who I am. Suffice to say I’ve been to boxing events and it is not a night that I enjoy – at all.
Go John Kasich!!!
http://cubachi.com/2011/03/08/gov-kasich-on-his-upcoming-state-of-the-state-address-i-am-definitely-not-using-a-teleprompter/
John Kasich:
Let me be clear 🙂
I DO KNOW what John Kasich will be saying as I’ve listened to him over the years on C-SPAN and Fox News.
It won’t be a suprise if he’s bold, courageous, fiscally responsible, and comes across as intelligent and compassionate.
Early MMA had almost no rules, basically it was one on one in the ring, no gloves, no weapons and the only other rule IIRC was no eye gouging.
What came out of that was the dominance of Brazilian juiJitsu, wrestling, boxing, and Thai kickboxing. All of these were sports played with their own set of rules.
The key to a good martial arts seems to be: a full contact sport.