I was looking for the text of Kennedy's 1960 article, The Soft American, published in Sports Illustrated, but couldn't find the text. I did find that someone read it on a Youtube, so even the post-literate Eschaton crowd might be able to follow it.
Though in the article there is a very, very brief disavowal of the Spartan view of physical vigor as being primarily for the purpose of military victory, Kennedy then put his program exactly in those terms, as a means of defeating communism militarily. It's hardly the only emphasis on the military benefits of fitness. He also notes the earlier program of President Eisenhower, which was explicitly founded to encourage national fitness as a military asset.
I would call your attention to the, no doubt well meaning, reader of the article's logo and the Kennedyesque, military name of his effort, "The Lean Berets",
In his comments after reading the article, he talks a lot about the military desirability of having higher fitness in the American population.
As an observation, how does a skull, a dead, decayed, EMPTY head, symbolize fitness? I've seen a skull logo used that way before in and around one of the more repulsive and cult like commercial fitness corporations. What's with that? Considering what football and some other sports do to brains......
In Kennedy's article he deplored how even with all of the emphasis and resources given to athletics in the United States, that Americans were becoming unfit. I would say that that kind of presentation of fitness through athletic games is probably guaranteed to produce those results because athletics is always about the few who excel and win and is a lot less interesting and attractive to the many who don't excel and win. Jocks like Kennedy, like Obama, love sports because they have that particular talent, most people don't and never will and lots of us find the coercion to participate in sports when we were young about as big a turn off as there could be. Jocks are about the last people who should be entrusted with a general program to promote health and physical fitness, the fitness shouldn't be for military conquest or the metaphorical equivalent in sports, it should be personal well being. Jocks don't often get that, they're mostly interested in the winners, not most of us. Among other things that is obvious in the long, post-war efforts to promote general fitness in the American population, that approach has failed, utterly and absolutely. To hell with sports, they're a good walk ruined.
Update: I should have added that the "fitness through athletic competition" emphasis is bound to not appeal to the many who think that sports is friggin boring and stupid. I have never, once, thought there was anything interesting or important about who got a ball somewhere. Or in who did it more times or with fewer strokes, etc. Sports are somewhere below ballet as an intellectual endeavor. And ballet is probably the stupidest of the arts.
Yeah, right, Kennedy wrote that article in SI. You probably also believe that Kennedy, rather than Ted Sorenson, wrote PROFILES IN COURAGE.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet you believe Obama didn't write his book, either.
DeleteReally Stupy, I proved you didn't know what you were talking about, to deny that Kennedy wrote the article he had printed under his name and that it wasn't his view of the fitness program he would launch when he became president is about the lamest and stupidest thing you've ever said. Though you've mostly said stupid stuff so it wouldn't be an easy manner to rank them for stupidity and lameness.
You might have been as stupid and unaware in your adolescence as you are in your senescence, some of us were paying attention to things and continued to.
You miss the point: JFK put his name to the article, BUT HE DIDN'T APPROVE OF ANY OF IT BECAUSE IT WAS MILITARISTIC!
DeleteBecause, you know.....
I remember the Kennedy administration very well and the campaign in which Kennedy campaigned on the Republican administration as being too soft on communism. The ridiculous spin put on things that held that the Kennedy boys were practically hippies is was bull shit in the Johnson years (I think a lot of it was to try to promote Robert Kennedy's run for the presidency) and it is even more absurd now. I can't remember the exact context but Johnson's observation that the Kennedy's were running the CIA as a Murder Incorporated is more how things turned out, though some of that, such as the murder of Patrice Lamumba started in the Eisenhower years.
DeleteSimps was just looking for some deviation from play-lefty mythology he could snark about at Duncan's Daycare and, once again, he didn't figure on me being able to back up what I said. Now he's doing the Curly shuffle faster than Kellyanne Conway does the Trump variation on that.
"Really Stupy, I proved you didn't know what you were talking about" [re Kennedy and the SI article]
DeleteRemind me again exactly where you did that.
Oh, I don't know if I can do that Stupy, to remind someone of something they have to have minded it to begin with and you're not in the habit of doing that.
DeleteYou mocked my saying that Kennedy's fitness program had a strong component of militarism about it and I produced the article that he wrote, in which he stated his intentions for his program in which he repeatedly emphasized fitness in the general population as being essential for providing soldiers for war.
Now you'll forget this within the time it take for you to read it - perhaps more understandable with your reading skills, or lack of same - so there's another two minutes of my time wasted.
BTW, Trump didn't write THE ART OF THE DEAL.
ReplyDeleteOh, Stupy, I've seen Donald Trump, I'm familiar with Donald Trump, Stups, Donald Trump is no Jack Kennedy.
DeleteContinue on, I'm almost at the point of coming up with a working etiology and symptomatology of your variation of Munchausen's Syndrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter
ReplyDeleteI bet you also think that William Shatner really wrote all those TEK WAR books.
Oh, Stupy, I don't read from your end of the book stall. Since you know about them I assume they're graphic books? Or do you know them from the made-for-cable movies of them?
DeleteSo you figure Jack Kennedy is like William Shatner, now. This is getting more absurd as you continue to try to turn total refutation into confirmation. You, Simps, you are a Donald Trump.
"So you figure Jack Kennedy is like William Shatner"
ReplyDeleteConsidering the horrible things you've said about Kennedy, that's an insult to Shatner. Get your act straight, Sparkles.
You're the one who said it, Stupy.
DeleteJack Kennedy wasn't the worst president in history but if he hadn't been assassinated people wouldn't have constructed an absurd mythology around his hardly great presidency. He did some really terrible things and some really stupid things as well as some admirable things. He was hardly the liberal he's sold as since his death. Robert Kennedy's mythology is about as fake as that around his brother. His sandbagging of Johnson over the Vietnam war, which his brothers and his administration did more to get us embroiled in than Johnson did, is probably his most significant contribution to history. He did some good things and said some really good things but his record doesn't support the mythology.
"I have never, once, thought there was anything interesting or important about who got a ball somewhere. "
ReplyDeleteRead THE BOYS OF SUMMER, schmuck. You might learn something. Or at least be moved by the poetry of it.
I remember when, after reading the cliche that the best writing in the newspaper was on the sports page, I read the sports page and almost had a diabetic seizure from the sugar and purpleness of it.
DeleteI'd rather read poetry than that shit that people who never read poetry mistake for poetry.
And it doesn't negate a single word of what I said because a bunch of sappy New York scribblers got together in support of a sentimental account of a baseball team that they moved as soon as the owners got a good offer for it.
You think Kennedy had his inaugural address ghosted too, Simps? How about his Harvard papers?
BTW, Sparkles, I was a nerdy kid in junior high who always got picked last when playing softball.
ReplyDeleteLike most normal people, however, I was not, like you, scarred for life psychologically by the experience.
I'm prepared to believe that you were a twerpy kid who did that.
DeleteI guess I was just more of a non-conformist than you were, just like now that you can't put fingers to keys without a stream of cliches coming out of them.
Baseball does have one thing going for it, it's not football. It is one of the most fucking boring wastes of time I was ever required to participate in in school. I'd rather have been doing algebra.
Hell, I'd rather have been doing push-ups and jumping jacks. I'd have been doing something other than standing there in the hot sun being bored.
DeleteSo you still think Ted Sorenson didn't write PROFILES IN COURAGE?
ReplyDeleteGreat. I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to offer you at a discount price.
I can't remember, we you the one who whined when I criticised the profile of Robert Taft?
DeleteI have no knowledge that Ted Sorenson ghosted it, except his denial, neither do you. You only have an accusation made by Republicans in the Nixon campaign in 1960 that has been successfully inserted into pop culcha.
You've got the wrong blog, Simps, it's Duncan's where they buy your crap.
"I can't remember, we[re] you the one who whined when I criticised the profile of Robert Taft? "
ReplyDeleteMy interest in Robert Taft is roughly equivalent to my interest in the various "celebrity" atheists you obsess over, which is to say non-existent.
You're losing your marbles, Sparkles, but perhaps Medicare will pay for the ginkgo biloba you so clearly need.
Ginko, don't people take that for erection dysfunction? Nope, never felt the need for something like that. Obviously you mixed it up with that other thing next to it in your medicine closet, the one the doctor gave you to keep you quiet as your brain dissolves.
DeleteWow. That last comment is factually inaccurate -- ginkgo biloba is taken to improve cognitive functions -- and screamingly unfunny; it sort of sums up of everything you do hear in one cringeworthy post.
ReplyDeleteKudos and huzzahs, Sparkles.
Gee, Simps, I don't need one of those, either. Obviously you do.
DeleteUm, it's odd, I just googled "ginko biloba erectile dysfunction" and got "About 362,000 results (0.66 seconds)".
Clearly, you need it for both.
1. "Ginko, don't people take that for erection dysfunction? Nope, never felt the need for something like that. "
ReplyDelete2. I don't need one of those, either [to improve cognitive function]."
Methinks the Sparky doth protest too much. But what else is new?
Oh, this is too funny. You bring up ginko biloba - clearly you have it on your vestigial mind - you don't know that it's widely used as a folk treatment for erectile dysfunction and, after showing you don't know that, you accuse me of needing the thing you brought up for impaired cognitive function - especially in the context of this exchange.
DeleteYour kind of bull shit is the reason that the atheist pseudo-left is guaranteed to be a loser, it doesn't matter what the truth is, it just matters what you can gull the gullible (I haven't checked, did you post on this at Duncan's sheltered workshop for the dupable?) into believing.
A folk treatment. Gotcha. From Wiki:
ReplyDelete"Although extracts of Ginkgo biloba leaf sold as dietary supplements may be marketed to improve cognitive function, there is no scientific evidence for effects on memory or attention in healthy people.[17][18] Gingko extract has also been studied as a possible treatment for cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's disease, but there is no good evidence for it having any effect.[18][19][20]
Systematic reviews of clinical trial results have shown there is no scientific evidence for effectiveness of ginkgo in treating high blood pressure,[21] menopause-related cognitive decline,[22] tinnitus,[23] post-stroke recovery,[24] peripheral arterial disease,[25] macular degeneration,[26] or altitude sickness.[27][28]"
You'll notice -- no mention of ED.
And by the way, it's "bullshit," not bull shit.
A. Anyone who takes Wikipedia as an authoritative source is, what's the word, oh, yeah, Stupy.
DeleteB. But now that you've done that, I'll use the Wikipedia article to show that you are sub-literate:
"The nut-like gametophytes inside the seeds are particularly esteemed in Asia, and are a traditional Chinese food. Ginkgo nuts are used in congee, and are often served at special occasions such as weddings and the Chinese New Year (as part of the vegetarian dish called Buddha's delight). In Chinese culture, they are believed to have health benefits; some also consider them to have aphrodisiac qualities."
As to your clip and paste from your idea of an authoritative source, you do realize that it refutes your claim, don't you?
I didn't say that I believed either of those claims, but, as I mentioned, I didn't bring up ginko, you did, Dinko.
That’s not how it’s marketed in the West, you hick nitwit.
ReplyDeleteNumb nuts, try googling it, it's marketed that way all over the world, especially in the West.
DeleteYou really are losing ground, Simps, and you never had much to start with. I really don't know why you come here unless it' masochism in which case, isn't that why you have a girlfriend?
Try googling "ginko biloba is marketed for sexual potency" and you'll get "About 131,000 results (0.68 seconds)" most of which are trying to sell it as whoopie pills. Though I notice a few scientific studies, mixed in.
DeleteSo...that's why you've been reported hanging out at various GNC outlets in Maine.
ReplyDeleteWhoo hoo, Sparkles!!!!
Oh, I get it, saying stupid things is your superpower. Do you wear your Poldark breeches and a cape while you do it?
Delete"ballet is probably the stupidest of the arts. "
ReplyDeleteNah, you're not a complete philistine asshole.
I've known enough ballet dancers to know that, by and large, they're not too bright. Too much time counting to low numbers, not enough thinking. And the stories are generally even stupider than operetta and musicals.
DeleteAh. The dancers are stupid. That makes ballet stupid.
ReplyDeleteGot it.
Well, take Eschaton 2017, the commenters are stupid, that makes Eschaton stupid.
DeleteAnd it's not just the dancers, it's the artistic directors and choreographers, in other words all of them. For example, in the wake of the scandal over a dancer dying of anorexia after one of the most eminent of those told the already dangerously underweight young dancer that she had to lose five pounds, the moron defended herself in the stupidest way I've ever read outside of the movies.
Meanwhile, a controversy was brewing back in Boston. In three days, The Boston Globe would run a front-page story headlined, "A Dancer's Death Raises Questions: Boston Ballet had told woman to lose weight." The story, which would put the entire ballet profession's bone-thin aesthetic under scrutiny, detailed how Heidi, a member of the company's 25-dancer corps de ballet, had been told by then-assistant artistic director Anna-Marie Holmes in early 1995 to lose five pounds. A flurry of subsequent media accounts, including a People magazine cover story, portrayed Heidi as yet another casualty of our culture's obsession with thinness. Fearing the potential professional consequences if she didn't slim down, Heidi, then weighing around 115 pounds, dropped 10 pounds; and, according to those who knew her, apparently through such unhealthful means as skipping meals, purging, herbal diet pills and laxatives, she kept losing weight. At the time of her death, Heidi weighed just 93 pounds. The ideal weight doctors suggest for an adult female her size is 120 pounds.
Amid the ensuing imbroglio, Holmes, (who declined to be interviewed for this story) defended her recommendation that Heidi lose weight, telling the Globe, "She [Heidi] was looking a little pudgy - her boobs, her hips, her thighs. You see a girl on stage, her butt is going up and down, it's not attractive. It's a visual art. Because it's a visual art, I can advise what looks good."
That's the kind of thing I can imagine you saying in a similar situation, so there you go.
Oh, and after that they elevated her to artistic director and she went on to work in places like American Ballet Theater.
DeleteBallet is full of amoral, irresponsible idiots.
Ah, so the artists -- ie dancers -- are stupid, not the art form.
ReplyDeleteLet's talk about oboe players when you get a chance, Sparkles.
:-)
Ah, ever ready with an especially stupid and well trodden cliche, huh, Stups? Mitch Miller was one of the best oboists of his time and he was nobodies fool. Heinz Holliger was extremely intelligent and an accomplished composer. I could go on but it's pointless because while many oboists are and were extremely intelligent, you are an idiot.
DeleteYou can always tell someone who doesn't actually know anything about music because they repeat the cliches that people who don't know anything about music tell each other thinking that they're in the know due to them.
If Mitch Miller was that smart, why did he hate rock?
DeleteI wonder if there's a word for incoherently using the conditional to frame a self apparent declarative statement. There should be.
DeleteDidn’t answer the question, I notice,
DeleteYou framed a declarative sentence as a question phrased in the conditional, it was incompetent and if you understood what I said you'd know that was an answer.
DeleteRock sucks.
And ballet is the stupidest of the arts.
DeleteNah, you're not a philistine asshole ignoramus.
:-)
Ah, you're repeating yourself, I'm not going to post any more of your comments.
DeleteYou figure that getting the Eschatots to agree with you bothers me but it only risks making me feel smug Or it would if I cared even a little.
"Ballet is full of amoral, irresponsible idiots"
ReplyDeleteAnd the rest of the people in the arts are moral exemplars. Particularly piano teachers.
Got it.
I'm not aware of any piano teacher who ever caused the death of their student by telling someone who was dangerously emaciated to lose weight and then, after that, to defend their action by saying their emaciated "boobies" moved around too much. If a piano teacher did that in a university they'd be canned and never get another job.
DeleteOf course, you're so stupid you probably don't see any problem with what the homicidal assistant director did.
"I'm not aware of any piano teacher who ever caused the death of their student..."
ReplyDeleteI'm not aware. The equivalent of Trump's "many people say..."
Go on, Simps, tell us how "I'm not aware" is equivalent of "many people say". Because anyone who thought for about ten seconds would realize that they not only don't intersect they are rather at cross purposes. One admits that you don't know something, the other pretends something's true because other people are pretending it's true.
DeleteReally, Simps, you are about as stupid as a rather stupid assistant ballet director, though, apparently, after saying one monumentally stupid thing the one in the story above at least learned to shut her stupid mouth. You never will, you rattle on like an Eschatot.
If it helps I will stipulate that you've never thought for about ten seconds on any one topic.
Delete"Go on, Simps, tell us how "I'm not aware" is equivalent of "many people say". Because anyone who thought for about ten seconds would realize that they not only don't intersect they are rather at cross purposes. One admits that you don't know something, the other pretends something's true because other people are pretending it's true. "
ReplyDeleteMissing the point as always Sparkles. What makes them equivalent is that in in Trumps' case and yours, they're both lying bullshit.
If I were interested enough to go through your published scribblage, I'd try to figure out if you were always an idiotic and habitual liar or if that's something that you came to later.
DeleteIf I thought there were any possibility that you either would or could look it up and understand what it means, I'd suggest you go look at an elementary school level dictionary (aware you couldn't handle anything more sophisticated than one written for that age group) and look up the word "equivalent" and that in your claim it means that the phrase "I'm not aware" is asserted to equal "many people say".
Well, that does it, Simps, you have managed to make me feel smug because you and the little fish bowl of Duncan's blog are obviously too stupid to even get that obvious point.
Did someone buy Duncan his robotic vacuum cleaner? The one he was tacitly begging for someone to buy him?
So yes, you missed the point yet again.
ReplyDeleteNo, it's kind of obtuse at the end but it's right there on top of your head.
Delete"in your claim it means that the phrase "I'm not aware" is asserted to equal "many people say"."
ReplyDeleteLet me do this again slowly.
In. Your. Case. It. Is. Equivalent. Because. When. You. And. Trump. Use. The. Phrases. You're. Both. Lying.
Wait, in that case, you're claiming you and Trump are exactly the same. We agree on something, Simps.
DeleteYou really are amazingly stupid for a conceited person, Simps.
Wow. Obviously English isn't even your second language.
ReplyDeleteYou do know that you just posted 17 one word sentences, some of which had only an article, a preposition or a conjunction in them.
Delete