THE JOCK ANTI-VAXXERS in the news have left me with the biggest case of the "well, yeah" I've ever had. I seldom remember the name of a Jock unless they're in the news much, generally for bad reasons, so the ones I'm hearing about are fairly new to me. I'd never heard of Aaron Rogers before last fall, I'd never heard of Novak Djokovic or Kyrie Irving till more recently.
Why is it any kind of a shock that jocks, even those reputed to be smarter than the average athlete turn out to be not that bright? I doubt that the ones I knew in my youth were atypical of the type, NONE OF WHOM WERE THE BRIGHTEST though some were not naturally stupid. Their stupidity was cultivated.
Athletics is like ballet dancing, it is an intrinsically anti-intellectual pursuit. It is something in which intelligence is an asset but it's intelligence about a very limited aspect of human action, the ability to perfect a skill and perform it as needed to get a result. Time spent doing that is not time spent reading or thinking or writing to try to clarify your thoughts. Music can be a lot like that, the time it takes to learn the skills of playing an instrument or singing can be time you don't spend on doing something else. I regret many of the hours I spent on technique as something I could have spent on something I now value more.
LOTS of highly skilled musicians are about as dumb as jocks and you can regularly hear some of them being that stupid, especially pop musicians and, especially, greedy rock stars. Your movie actors, success in movie acting being a function of sexual attraction more than talent or ability, are probably an even better example in the, um, arts. Especially those who had early movie success, got rich and then, their sexual allure being the sum total of their, um, "talent," they are left with little to do except blame "Hollywood liberals" for why the offers stopped coming.
Though there are actors, directors and even people who work in opera who are real intellectuals and even some who go farther than that and actually think critically and clearly. I would say that those are seldom working at the biggest venues with the biggest budgets. In the arts small is a better bet on having something worth saying or hearing. Musicals are probably the catch all of stupid combining so much of the worst of all of those worlds. The history of massive and expensive flops, losing star struck millionaires millions of their disposable cash proves that the stupid and musicals being in the same place is a sure bet. Mel Brooks got that right.
And, I have never observed stupidity being presented as a positive aspect in any of the arts. Well, apart from the ballet. Modern dance more encourages thought.
That is to say, unlike the world of athletics and sports, music doesn't positively encourage anti-intellectualism and stupidity as the culture of sports do. For many jocks being stupid is expected and more than just fulfilled, it is endorsed and encouraged. Intellectualism is shunned and despised, coaches certainly don't in large numbers want their athletes thinking for themselves, Colin Kaepernick thought for himself and look what it got him.
It is one of the side-effects of the sexual attractiveness of people who spend too much of their time on their bodies is so often associated with stupidity, though that might have as much to do with hopes of leering lechers luring them into their schemes as anything else. As we are also finding, a lot of sports coaches are those leering lechers such as Denny Hastert and that Penn State football pedophile or, as in the case of Jim Jordan, self-interested observers of that. I strongly suspect that there is far more sexual abuse in sports at all levels, including youth sports, than in all of the clerical pedophiles. Though you will never see a Spotlight style investigation of that because, unlike religion, sports are sacrosanct in America's secular piety.
The above is, without question, the stupidest thing ever written by anybody in the last 4000 years.
ReplyDeleteEssentially, what you just said, is that every talented person in every field of human endeavor down through the ages, completely sucks and is completely stupid. Including you, although you didn't quite claim that YOU are talented. Which shows a becoming modesty.
To put it in terms you, a star addled lover of musicals, might find familiar, with you it's all or nuthin' huh?
ReplyDeleteSomeone who is used to the act of reading and thinking would understand I was speaking in generalities of, not naturally occurring groups of people, but people who are a self-selected and, so, non-random population. The chance elements of skill and ability further refine those groups on the basis of being more and more alike but, also, so do things like a paying audience wanting to gawk at nice looking bodies, even more so.
There is nothing whatsoever shocking or to be remarked at when a pro-sports jock turns out to be an egotistical, ignorant, superstitious ass as the ones I named have. What is atypical is when they turn out to be giving, generous, informed, intelligent and logical. Nothing I said about the world of athletics is not something which is obviously true, including its flagrant anti-intellectualism. Nor of them being spoiled within educational and other establishments. It is certainly not news that coaches will often pressure teachers to pad the grades or cut corners or do favors for star athletes, which is probably a big reason that so many of them expect it and are so vulnerable to politically pushed snake oil and anti-vaxx stupidity. Aaron Rogers apparently was sold as the opposite of what he is, including smart.
You'll have to defer to my experience of the music profession, I've been in it whereas you just pretend to be of it. If anything I was kind to the ballet and pop music. I admitted there were people in all of the above who defied the type, I am always glad to find out there are even professional jocks who aren't selfish jerks, though they are so rare as to be remarkable.
I do not for a second think I was nearly as harsh on the coaching profession as it deserves, especially things like football, hockey, etc. where those blood suckers destroy the brains and bodies of young idiots, encourage them to be anti-intellectual, to have a life of the mind, to be loyal to the criminal gang that most sports teems emulate more than anything else even as, in so many cases, as soon as some state or private university will pay them many more millions than they've shaken from the one they work for, they turn their back on the team they demanded that loyalty from. Coaches who get paid for it are nearly uniformly selfish, superficial assholes. There are some who volunteer who have base motives though, I'm sure, there are some who are something like that cartoon lie, Ted Lasso. But for pay, yeah, pull the other one before it kicks you in the teeth.