Friday, August 24, 2007

This just in...

Here's the thing: things just don't make sense. Its like those kids who always cry "but it isn't fair"... fair doesn't exist---who told people that the world is fair or that things make sense?

Some observations from today's CNN.com
So today there is yet another report of another ridiculous female teacher engaging in inappropriate activity with young male student. Ho-hum. I'm a little bored with this stuff, aren't you? But you know what DOES get me? How long has it been since we've heard a national report of some male school teacher having consensual relations with a female student? I can't think of one in the last several years. Do you think that means it hasn't/doesn't happen? Or are those male teachers immediately treated as the most heinous of criminals, the "predators", and protected from media exposure because of the threat of wrongly impugning that educator's character? Why aren't we bombarded with video spots of tearful 15-year old girls clutching their teddy bears and weeping over the true love between herself and her English Composition teacher? How we all just misunderstand the very nature of true love?

Or is it, perhaps, that there is some element of our population that is fascinated with the relative "luck" of a 13 to 14 year old doing the do with his teacher? Isn't it just kind of steamy, then, to talk over the details of that woman's character and life, to ponder why she's so hot for a little boy action? I think the media is selling us something on these stories. So what I want to know about all these tawdry tales of teachers touching toms-dicks-and-harrys is why should I believe that we have a crisis of depraved and horny female middle school teachers in this country? Could it be that 13-year old boys who've been making the two headed beast with their homeroom teacher just can't keep their flipping mouths shut about it?

What Rob wants to know is probably what all the guys want to know: where were these teachers when he was in 8th grade? And my friends, I think that's the whole story. I don't care any more.

Statistics
This kind of relates to a post a couple of days ago on that particular stat often flung around by the Federal DOT folks: 80% of all accidents occur within three miles of home. Eh-hem. Rob's response to my request for discussion was, "most people live in very dangerous places." Cute, sweetie, but wrong.

Not knowing how their data were collected or sliced, I'd say right off the bat that the issue has to do with average trip distance. I don't think I'd get a lot of arguments if I were to say that the majority of automobile trips begin, and end, at home. The shorter the drive, the closer potential accidents will be to starting or end-point. Shouldn't be too hard to imagine that the 80% figure represents nothing so much as an artifact of actual driving patterns, rather than hazard or lack of caution among drivers closer to home.

And another thing...
This Atlanta Falcons Vick guy with the dog-fights. What a f*cking moron and all around bad dude. There's just nothing quite as reprehensible as violence against a weaker foe or beings unable to defend themselves.

You know, football is a very violent sport. Really. It is. In fact, I think most people agree that it is essentially modern-day gladiator stuff. The kinds of folks who have brilliant careers in football are those that have really honed ferocity and enjoy the brutality of the game. I hear you boys now, all of you saying, oh you silly girl---its all about the beauty of a well-executed play, the nimble agility of the quarterback taking precious time to calculate the trajectory of his pass to just the right receiver, anticipating air speed of the ball and speed of the receiver.

Hogwash. Its about knocking people down, hitting them hard so the next time they think of running at you they'll not do it so well either because of injury or intimidation. Check out those defensive linemen, kiddies. When they stop playing football, they go work as enforcers.

And this is something to think about because now the NFL has suspended Vick and I'm sure the Atlanta Falcons are none to happy to have him on their roster either. He represents a business liability to the League and moreso to the Falcons. I'm not at all certain that the Commissioner gives a rats ass that Vick is a bad dude---just that he's bad for business. I'd be interested in knowing just how equitably these suspensions are handed down...for what proportion of violent offenses are NFL players suspended by type of crime. Like battery of a spouse, assault, etc. That would be nice to know.

The reason I've been kind of getting spun up about this is because the NFL profits directly from the capacity for violence and brutality among its players. I don't think any of us should be surprised to hear of these guys having trouble with setting boundaries. Do you think the NFL helps them with that? I bet not. Its no different than our little soldier boys, particularly the Marines and Infantrymen, who are little more than killing machines at war and who have trouble with untoward violence when they return to civilian life.

They tried to make her go to Rehab...
and she said no, no, no. Amy Winehouse, oh pop star of the early summer, singing a catching ditty about dependence, recovery and rehab just fell face first into her own song, didn't she? I feel so badly for her. She just can't help herself and today she ends up beaten terribly, defending the man who beat her after she flew the hatch of her most recent attempt for supervised detox. Classic bad stuff. I wish it weren't happening to her.

1 comment:

Special K said...

I agree with you re: football and army - organizations that sponsor and promote violence create some scary hybrids in the slightly unhinged.

Oh, I'm so sick of cnn.com! It used to be my #1 source, now it's all bits about dogs and celebrities. I started using Google News.