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Jake
The NCAA needs to be investigated by Congress. Coaches, universities, the NCAA, television and radio stations are making millions to billions off of these athletes, many of whom came from poor backgrounds. Yet if one takes a car, even gets a meal paid for by someone else, they get investigated? What is this, slavery?
Do most of the comfortable middle to upper-middle class fans know the socioeconomic background most of these players come from? They don't have their wealthy parents to cut them checks in school to support them. A lot really don't care, and aren't there for a college education, they are there to play sports. If their performance suffers, they are cut and lose their scholarship. So it can be argued that sports comes first at these places. I have graduated from a Division 1 school with a top football program and can confirm this.
I used to condemn athletes for taking money and cars until I started living in the real world and dealt with scumbag bosses and their lame excuses for ripping you off, while they buy big houses and vacation all the time. These players are getting the shaft, and most NCAA fans are too dim to see this. If this is so amateur, how can the coach get millions a year, in addition to endorsement deals? He should be making as much as a professor and teaching on campus!
Bush had the opportunity to speak out against this garbage, but instead he decided he was going to "help" USC. He's either dumb or brainwashed.
I sense there is a bit of racial divide when it comes to this issue too. Notice it's bad for the black players to have taken money and bought luxury items, but no one talks about the white coaches, the university presidents, and TV and radio broadcasters who fly in private planes or first class and live in nice homes!
I'm sorry, I know it's against the "rules", but my moral compass tells me that the NCAA is wrong for not paying athletes, and not even allowing them to take outside sources of revenue.
University is not the place for a minor league system. The rules in place basically protect an institution of slavery. Notice that very few, if any sports news outlets or news op-ed columns ever criticize the NCAA. They are in on it with them.
Does the NFL or NBA not realize how much money the NCAA is costing them? Their teams could be as popular as teams in Europe because fans could devote most of their time and funds to the local team!
I just fail to see, how the athletes are to blame for everything with these scandals.
Answer
i have no ideas
i have no ideas
Should I wear a poppy for Remembrance Day?
Hatadey
Wearing a poppy these days seems to be more about convention/the done thing than about remembering our war dead (just look at how early the poppies appeared on TV news presenters this year) - so should I bother wearing one this time?
Answer
I ask myself this question every year and it always makes me uneasy. There is a Latin phrase that was popular during the first world war, "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" - it is sweet and right to die for your country. This, along with the inscription "the glorious dead" on the cenotaph, in London, represents a nationalistic, pro-military philosophy to the poppy appeal that I find quite distasteful. War is simply a tool of the state to impose its political ambitions by force and I see no "glory" in the soldiers who die when sent to fight for these causes. When the queen, prime minister, etc, with much pomp and pageantry, lay down their poppy wreaths before the cenotaph, I do not see this as an act of mourning for the common soldier who suffered and died so that we may be free, but rather a self-congratulatory state aggrandizing itself through ceremony. There is a wonderful poem by Wilfred Owen (see link below) that satirizes this kind of thinking and confronts the realities of war.
My problem with the red poppy is the message that it implies, "our soldiers died gloriously for our country, they slaughtered our enemies, and we will send them to do it again". One alternative to the red poppy is the white poppy (again, see link below) with the slogan "white poppy for peace" which represents the pacifist cause of ending all wars. This has caused much controversy over the years and has been branded both unpatriotic and offensive by a certain type of middle england demographic. To my mind, however, it offers a much more tasteful alternative to the red poppy.
Of course, to many people, the wearing of the red poppy has become mere social convention, as you rightly point out. This is quite true of the BBC which is eager to retain its good relationship with the public, and for this reason broadcasters as well as politicians and those more generally in the public eye wear the poppy to keep on good terms with the public and that section of the population who would become offended if they saw a particular figure going poppyless. This is another concern of mine: that NOT wearing the poppy itself has become an offensive act because it deviates from the social norm. This is just mindless conformist behaviour that, in my opinion, shouldn't be encouraged. The reason why the Royal British Legion and its poppy appeal receive this privileged status above other charities is because it is endorsed with so much pageantry by the state. It is wrong, in my opinion, that BBC presenters are permitted, expected and encouraged to wear the poppy, but prohibited from wearing, for example, a breast cancer awareness badge. There was an episode some years ago of Have I Got News For You in which Ian Hislop refused to wear the poppy and wore a large cardboard "P" of his own making because his mother had recently undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer (I believe) and resented the expectation placed upon him to wear a poppy. I applaud this kind of thinking.
At the very least, it is a thoughtless social convention, and at the worst, it is a representation of foul pro-war nationalism. But wear one if you want, because 99% of people who see your poppy won't be thinking about this stuff as they go about their lives.
I ask myself this question every year and it always makes me uneasy. There is a Latin phrase that was popular during the first world war, "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" - it is sweet and right to die for your country. This, along with the inscription "the glorious dead" on the cenotaph, in London, represents a nationalistic, pro-military philosophy to the poppy appeal that I find quite distasteful. War is simply a tool of the state to impose its political ambitions by force and I see no "glory" in the soldiers who die when sent to fight for these causes. When the queen, prime minister, etc, with much pomp and pageantry, lay down their poppy wreaths before the cenotaph, I do not see this as an act of mourning for the common soldier who suffered and died so that we may be free, but rather a self-congratulatory state aggrandizing itself through ceremony. There is a wonderful poem by Wilfred Owen (see link below) that satirizes this kind of thinking and confronts the realities of war.
My problem with the red poppy is the message that it implies, "our soldiers died gloriously for our country, they slaughtered our enemies, and we will send them to do it again". One alternative to the red poppy is the white poppy (again, see link below) with the slogan "white poppy for peace" which represents the pacifist cause of ending all wars. This has caused much controversy over the years and has been branded both unpatriotic and offensive by a certain type of middle england demographic. To my mind, however, it offers a much more tasteful alternative to the red poppy.
Of course, to many people, the wearing of the red poppy has become mere social convention, as you rightly point out. This is quite true of the BBC which is eager to retain its good relationship with the public, and for this reason broadcasters as well as politicians and those more generally in the public eye wear the poppy to keep on good terms with the public and that section of the population who would become offended if they saw a particular figure going poppyless. This is another concern of mine: that NOT wearing the poppy itself has become an offensive act because it deviates from the social norm. This is just mindless conformist behaviour that, in my opinion, shouldn't be encouraged. The reason why the Royal British Legion and its poppy appeal receive this privileged status above other charities is because it is endorsed with so much pageantry by the state. It is wrong, in my opinion, that BBC presenters are permitted, expected and encouraged to wear the poppy, but prohibited from wearing, for example, a breast cancer awareness badge. There was an episode some years ago of Have I Got News For You in which Ian Hislop refused to wear the poppy and wore a large cardboard "P" of his own making because his mother had recently undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer (I believe) and resented the expectation placed upon him to wear a poppy. I applaud this kind of thinking.
At the very least, it is a thoughtless social convention, and at the worst, it is a representation of foul pro-war nationalism. But wear one if you want, because 99% of people who see your poppy won't be thinking about this stuff as they go about their lives.
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