16 years for setting fire to a Pride flag? Seems excessive. It wasn't his form of protest, in and of itself. It was the fact that his use of fire was done in a prohibited manner. Also that the flag was stolen. The fact that it was as Pride Flag allowed hate crime charges to be added (which I am completely against).

Finally, he is a habitual offender, allowing for longer sentencing (which should have been six years and a month, tops, according to the laws of Iowa).

I would imagine this sentence would easily be overturned. Despite all the other factors involved, sixteen years is far too long.

I don't believe in using trendy political nouns such as "toxic masculinity" (doing that just leads to labeling people, after all), but that doesn't change the fact that this column has serious points. "Cole" is 18, btw.

(Also, reading the article made me very glad that despite our moving around and my having to change schools several times, I NEVER went to a school that took sports particularly seriously.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/the-miseducation-of-the-american-boy/603046/

From the midpoint:

...As a senior in high school, Cole was made captain of the crew team. He relished being part of a unit, a band of brothers. When he raced, he imagined pulling each stroke for the guy in front of him, for the guy behind him—never for himself alone. But not everyone could muster such higher purpose. “Crew demands you push yourself to a threshold of pain and keep yourself there,” Cole said. “And it’s hard to find something to motivate you to do that other than anger and aggression.”

I asked him about how his teammates talked in the locker room. That question always made these young men squirm. They’d rather talk about looking at porn, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation—anything else. Cole cut his eyes to the side, shifted in his seat, and sighed deeply. “Okay,” he finally said, “so here’s my best shot: We definitely say fuck a lot; fuckin’ can go anywhere in a sentence. And we call each other pussies, bitches. We never say the N-word, though. That’s going too far.”

“What about fag?” I asked.

“No,” he said, shaking his head firmly.

“So why can’t you say fag or the N-word but you can say pussy and bitch? Aren’t those just as offensive?”

“One of my friends said we probably shouldn’t say those words anymore either, but what would we replace them with? We couldn’t think of anything that bites as much.”

“Bites?”

“Yeah. It’s like … for some reason pussy just works. When someone calls me a pussy—‘Don’t be a pussy! Come on! Fuckin’ go! Pull! Pull! Pull!’—it just flows. If someone said, ‘Come on, Cole, don’t be weak! Be tough! Pull! Pull! Pull!,’ it just wouldn’t get inside my head the same way. I don’t know why that is.” He paused. “Well,” he said, “maybe I do. Maybe I just try not to dig too deeply.”

Although losing ground in more progressive circles, like the one Cole runs in, fag remained pervasive in the language of the boys I interviewed—including those who insisted that they would never use the word in reference to an actual homosexual. Fag has become less a comment on a boy’s sexuality, says the University of Oregon sociology professor C. J. Pascoe, than a referendum on his manhood. It can be used to mock anything, she told me, even something as random as a guy “dropping the meat out of his sandwich.” (Perhaps oddest to me, Pascoe found that one of the more common reasons boys get tagged with fag is for acting romantically with a girl. That’s seen as heterosexual in the “wrong” way, which explains why one high-school junior told me that having a girlfriend was “gay.”) That fluidity, the elusiveness of the word’s definition, only intensifies its power, much like slut for girls...

...Just because some young men now draw the line at referring to someone who is openly gay as a fag doesn’t mean, by the way, that gay men (or men with traits that read as gay) are suddenly safe. If anything, the gay guys I met were more conscious of the rules of manhood than their straight peers were. They had to be—and because of that, they were like spies in the house of hypermasculinity.

lenona,

I think part of this is that swear words have an impact; words that are not (or cannot be) usable in casual conversation or what we used to call mixed company.

Anything that you can say in front of your mother is probably not going to get under one's skin and create anger. Coaches don't rely on motivating athletes with manners or lengthy discussion of the benefits of exercise and competition.

If you check, I believe you'll find that coaches of women's sports also rely on "locker room" expressions to get under their charges' skins.

When GHW Bush was running for president in 1980, he was labelled a "wimp" by his opponents. It was a label easily stuck on him (in the era of smart people being portrayed as Urkels), due to his whippet-thin frame, glasses, properly-cut suits, and his brahmin upbringing. And it proved to be a devastating insult - Ronald Reagan, a "macho" man who played heroes in Westerns and war movies, won the nomination and the election.

Bush, a war hero in real life, was added to the ticket as vice president in order to bring in the Northeastern liberal Republican vote (the "Rockefeller" Republicans).

Calling someone a "wimp" today would likely not have the same effect. The word, through overuse and familiarity, has lost a lot of its impact. However, the weakness in a candidate it implied is still a concern - witness Joe Biden constantly challenging every man who confronts him to match him in doing push-ups.

Great point and new to me, Conan... A distaste for effete bearing by male leaders may be eternal, but the power of *that* simple and mild word to express the dislike has been diminished in short decades.

For all we know, it was that particular deployment which aged it so briskly.

But yes, cussing is an arms race. The ninnies just keep on coming, and it's hard to keep up. This isn't entirely a social justice or even an electronic media phenomenon.

I've been diving on the wreck of the Japanese transport ship he sank trom the sky, and it still reeked of freshly-leaked oil... As if his youthful targets were still bleeding seven years after he was out of 1700 Penn.

Poppy was not a wimp.

Poppy was not a wimp. ~ Crid at December 20, 2019 8:31 AM

No, he was not.

Poppy flew a TBM Avenger, which in WWII US Navy-ese meant a Grumman-designed torpedo bomber (TBF) built by General Motors. The Avenger was a vast improvement over the TBD Devastator it replaced.

Still, torpedo bombing was mostly a suicide mission. 35-of-41 TBDs and 5-of-6 TBFs were lost at Midway.

The plane had to fly slow and level at wave-top height straight into the enemy anti-aircraft guns to drop the torpedo with any hope of accuracy. All this while being shot at by the ships around it and simultaneously attacked by enemy fighters. Once the torpedo was dropped, the plane had to bank away, exposing its undefended ventral area to now pissed off enemy gunners.

Some suppression of enemy defenses was done by fighters strafing the enemy ships, but the torpedo bombers still took a great deal of enemy fire. It required pretty steely nerves to be a torpedo bomber pilot, and a lot of skill and/or luck to be a veteran one.

Lenona,

As usual, one is forced to wonder why do you care, and what is your point? Is it that men are icky, and if they weren't so icky, maybe they'd like you more?

Well, good luck with that.

PSA: Know any lawyers in the area who can help with this?

https://mobile.twitter.com/Ron4California/status/1208104316025729029

Anything that you can say in front of your mother is probably not going to get under one's skin and create anger. Coaches don't rely on motivating athletes with manners or lengthy discussion of the benefits of exercise and competition.
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I realize that.

See what I said above about my gratefulness for schools that had the sense NOT to treat sports as being half as important as academics. I seem to remember a short PBS documentary about exchange students, 10 years ago or so. In it, some students (from Hong Kong, maybe?) were shocked at how much time and money in the U.S. gets spent on sports. Maybe that's why at least some countries are leaving the U.S. in the dust when it comes to math? Why DID the U.S. ever start putting sports at the same level or higher than academics? How is that not bad for the collective intellect?

Btw, if parents weren't such pushovers when it comes to letting kids have all the video games they want, kids wouldn't "need" organized sports to get exercise; they'd probably be playing sports on their own, with different teams each time, the way they used to. (Not to mention that parents are anxious to get kids into good colleges, so they're afraid to let them have any unsupervised time; they want their kids to have sound alibis when their unsupervised peers get into trouble with the law. But why not give them more useful things to do, like helping the community? As one columnist said, who's really more useful to society - a star athlete or a virologist?)
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why do you care
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Why DON'T you care that at least some white boys (and their coaches, to judge from Orenstein's article) have decided that any word that puts down other boys for being different is now strictly verboten, but putting down girls AND shunning those boys who stand up for girls is still just fine (see the rest of the article) - and that that likely erodes their overall respect for half the human race? Why should girls get less respect than other people?

Seems to me coaches could simply compare lazy players to kids half their age. So why do they feel the need to use obscene words about women instead?

Btw, I expect to be seeing Orenstein in a few weeks, if anyone would like me to ask her any questions.

Court sentences California/Michigan doctor to prison for unnecessary (and botched) spinal surgeries.

Dr. Aria Sabit says 20 years is too much punishment for the lives he's destroyed.

The court disagrees.

Fasten your seatbelts!

Study: Proposed Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Chicago hyperloop would be highly profitable

Woke-ass company with diversity goals. What could possibly go wrong?

Health system sets 25% diversity contracting goal for Mount Pleasant project

Something with which Amy would undoubtedly agree:

Study Shows the Types of Foods in Your Diet Can Hurt or Help Your Sleep

Apparently, being on this commission serves as little more than a resume filler.

Highway commission won’t advance new major projects after 5-year hiatus

Mike Bloombers is such a winner, isn't he?

Sociopathic businessmen are nothing new but this is ridiculous.

Oddly enough, Fox News reports four of the eight as the CEO and top execs, but the CBS link doesn't mention their job titles.

It's all fun and games until your discover the pinholes.

Uganda Sanctions Marie Stopes for Faulty Condoms

Why does Lenona care? It appears to be racial bigotry. Very disappointing.

Seems to me coaches could simply compare lazy players to kids half their age. So why do they feel the need to use obscene words about women instead? ~ lenona at December 20, 2019 2:47 PM

Because such comparisons don't really work - except in the movies. Swear words deliver shock and awe. "You're playing like a 7-year-old!" just doesn't.

It would be nice if people really could be motivated by "C'mon guys, let's go win one for the Gipper," but that only works in the movies or one emotion-filled time. By the third game where you're "winning one for the Gipper," no one gives a rat's ass about George Gip.

Where passions must be inflamed, they must first be stirred.

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." ~ Mark Twain

Ben, what was THAT supposed to mean? Obviously, I wasn't suggesting that the taboo on OTHER words be lifted.
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Where passions must be inflamed,
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Their priorities are clearly out of whack. Again, sports (even football) are simply not half as important as school, and I would expect decent parents not to tolerate any coach who uses obscene terms about any group of human beings. If they can't get a better coach, they need to reconsider their kid's "need" for organized sports.

But then, who am I kidding, when we're talking about a society where it's pretty common for parents to show up at games and yell obscenities themselves, even if they're not about race or gender? (I NEVER heard parents behave that way, 40 years ago. What happened? Why should we tolerate the change?)

And why is no one daring to answer the questions "Why DID the U.S. ever start putting sports at the same level or higher than academics? How is that not bad for the collective intellect?"

lenona, you'll get no argument from me that sports should not be elevated above academics at our academic institutions; especially below the college level, where we're supposed to be teaching students what to prioritize in life.

I think part of the problem is that football is easier to understand than algebra to the average intellect. Basketball is certainly much more exciting than reading and deconstructing Jane Austen.

That's not to say that sports don't have important roles to play in life and childhood development; especially team sports for boys who are still learning to channel their innate aggressiveness into a system of rules.

Thanks, Conan.

Let's keep in mind, though, that kids could always play sports On Their Own, without any organization by adults - IF they really cared about team sports in the first place. Aggressive kids who refuse to play by the rules can be told to leave by their peers. Also, as I said, parents who want their kids to get exercise and to stay away from screens have options other than sports - if they have the backbone to say "no, you may NOT have 30 hours per week of screen time" and "no, I will not buy those games for you, nor are you allowed to buy them with your own money." (I'd guess that at least half of all parents don't have that nerve, so they force the kids into sports and count on media hype to keep the kids from dropping out of the team.)

Not to mention the need to teach kids to do housework, as a team(!) without complaining. (Even three-year-olds can play at washing floors and slowly pick up the skills, so don't try to say that it's OK to put kids that age in front of the TV - any pediatrician will tell you it's not, the younger the child is.) The earlier kids start doing chores, the easier it is for them not to complain.

To spell things out for other readers here:

1. When did the parent/coach philosophy become "it's not how you play the game; it's whether you win or not"? And why? How did good sportsmanship become trivial? Why do modern parents accept that?

2. When did team sports stop being something boys freely CHOSE to do (whether it was a school team or not) and start becoming a chore and a mandatory test of manhood?*** As the late, famous historian Paul Fussell said in the 1980s, in effect, men who are highly educated or well-read should be free NOT to be interested in sports without getting labeled snobbish or anti-male. Besides, where does that leave a man who's too short for most sports?

3. Why is it too much to expect coaches not to use hateful language? And why don't parents care about that? If "wimp" no longer has enough bite to push boys to do their best, maybe, just maybe, that means a lot of boys are sick of sports that are organized by adults?

4. If we need to admit that "fat acceptance" does nothing for women other than to shorten their lives, how can we ignore what tackle football does to boys' brains in the long run, either? Or that most sports players will never play professionally - and those who do, have to quit around age 40 and must support themselves some other way?

***OK, I know the likely answer to that one - it was probably in the 1970s, when sexist parents could no longer get away with sending sons to college but not daughters; everyone would condemn them for it, so they probably started pushing boys more toward football. Of course, TV also contributed to sports hype/stardom as never before.

Finally (from 1990):

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1290&dat=19900506&id=o_ZTAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_owDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6868,1857378

Excerpt:

"...Today, you find children in baseball leagues organized by adults. There is no tossing of the bat, therefore, the teams are always the same and intense rivalries develop. Because the teams don't change, a child is either on a winning team or a losing team.

"Adults coach, umpire, determine who will play and who will not, who will play what position, and what the rules shall be. Adults resolve conflicts that arise in the course of the game. Adults maintain the fields, provide equipment, give the teams names and design the uniforms.

"Adults hand out the trophies at the end of the season. And the audience to this game consists of a bleacher-full of adults who are yelling -- at the coaches, the umpires, the kids and one another.

"This isn't play. This is performance and this is pressure and we have no business doing this to children and no excuse can justify it...

"...I'm simply suggesting that we give our children back their games. They don't belong to us and the best of intentions do not justify our interference..."

And:

http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2015/07/02/why_you_should_6.html

"Why You Should Always Skip Your Children's Baseball Games"

Let's keep in mind, though, that kids could always play sports On Their Own, without any organization by adults - IF they really cared about team sports in the first place. ~ lenona at December 22, 2019 1:37 PM

True, but keep in mind that in sandlot sports umpire calls are arguable, if there's a odd player willing to be the umpire. If not, there are, in effect, only the rules the players themselves agree to abide by - ala Lord of the Flies. There are no coaches either, to instruct players in the proper use of force and in exercising restraint when it is called for.

The umpire in sandlot games, if there is one, is a peer, not a voice of authority. In organized team sports, however, the umpire is a voice of final authority. Good training to teach boys to channel their innate aggression into a system of rules.