Lumpenproletariat
Veteran Member
- Joined
- May 9, 2014
- Messages
- 2,714
- Basic Beliefs
- ---- "Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts."
What's the point of make-believe sports where the rules exclude better performers?
Apparently there is a test. I.e., participants must pass a test to prove their inferiority. I.e., they must score LOW on an IQ test (75 or lower) in order to qualify, so our tax dollars go to a program requiring participants to prove their idiot status.
And there's a case of cheating, in 2000 when Spain's Special Olympics basketball team won the championship by recruiting some good players of normal IQ and instructing them to blow the test (skip to 3-4 minutes into the video for the important part):
The video blames the coach and others who arranged this scam, but there is something foul about the whole event in the first place. There is something obscene about making idiocy a requirement to qualify as a participant.
What is the legitimacy of a sport which requires competitors to prove their low intelligence in order to qualify? What's the point of excluding from competition someone who has more talent or aptitude? This turns the event into a freak show. This mocks the value of superior performance and says in effect that nothing is any better than anything else, because all that matters is watching the "freaks" pretending to play the game, with better performance having no value.
If Special Olympics wants to help the disabled, why don't they have them play anyone at all who wants to participate, even those who have superior abilities? Why not have the events OPEN TO ALL COMERS rather than excluding those who have superior talent?
Those of superior talent should be desired as participants, to make the events truly competitive and genuine as sports events where the winners would have a reason to be proud of their performance, and even the loser can claim it was a real challenge to go up against someone who had an advantage, and that if they could narrow the point spread it would still be an accomplishment. Whereas if there's a rule that your opponent has to be a dud, what did you accomplish even if you won?
There are many occasions in genuine sports where the losing team still did well and was proud of their performance, because there was an imbalance or inequality of talent on the opposing sides. Though most events have the better contestants generally matched up with other better opponents, there is also a place for uneven competition where one side is highly favored over the other, and then there is added interest if the lower-rated competitor can upset the favored one, or even come close to an upset.
Can someone explain what is the value of excluding those who have superior talent? Why should this exclusion ever be mandated in the rules? for any sport? Unless everyone admits it's phony and only a pretense of being a real sport. Like the "Make-a-Wish" fantasy enactments, a scripted performance, or a phony miracle healing act by a televangelist, or psychic scam where the performer pretends to communicate to the dead or move objects with his mind, etc. Is it all just make-believe? Is the Special Olympics just make-believe where the participants and promoters just put on an act?
This sounds more like a feel-good scam, with someone getting rich off the disabled, rather than a genuine competitive sports program, or anything where the participants have anything to be proud of. What are they proud of if the rules dictate from the outset that you can't have real competition but only the symbolism and pretense of it, and the only reason they're having you play is that they feel sorry for you?
Is this what the disabled want? Pity? someone feeling sorry for them and pretending to be impressed by their performance, no matter how deficient it is? Why is this something to be funded with tax dollars?
Apparently there is a test. I.e., participants must pass a test to prove their inferiority. I.e., they must score LOW on an IQ test (75 or lower) in order to qualify, so our tax dollars go to a program requiring participants to prove their idiot status.
And there's a case of cheating, in 2000 when Spain's Special Olympics basketball team won the championship by recruiting some good players of normal IQ and instructing them to blow the test (skip to 3-4 minutes into the video for the important part):
The video blames the coach and others who arranged this scam, but there is something foul about the whole event in the first place. There is something obscene about making idiocy a requirement to qualify as a participant.
What is the legitimacy of a sport which requires competitors to prove their low intelligence in order to qualify? What's the point of excluding from competition someone who has more talent or aptitude? This turns the event into a freak show. This mocks the value of superior performance and says in effect that nothing is any better than anything else, because all that matters is watching the "freaks" pretending to play the game, with better performance having no value.
If Special Olympics wants to help the disabled, why don't they have them play anyone at all who wants to participate, even those who have superior abilities? Why not have the events OPEN TO ALL COMERS rather than excluding those who have superior talent?
Those of superior talent should be desired as participants, to make the events truly competitive and genuine as sports events where the winners would have a reason to be proud of their performance, and even the loser can claim it was a real challenge to go up against someone who had an advantage, and that if they could narrow the point spread it would still be an accomplishment. Whereas if there's a rule that your opponent has to be a dud, what did you accomplish even if you won?
There are many occasions in genuine sports where the losing team still did well and was proud of their performance, because there was an imbalance or inequality of talent on the opposing sides. Though most events have the better contestants generally matched up with other better opponents, there is also a place for uneven competition where one side is highly favored over the other, and then there is added interest if the lower-rated competitor can upset the favored one, or even come close to an upset.
Can someone explain what is the value of excluding those who have superior talent? Why should this exclusion ever be mandated in the rules? for any sport? Unless everyone admits it's phony and only a pretense of being a real sport. Like the "Make-a-Wish" fantasy enactments, a scripted performance, or a phony miracle healing act by a televangelist, or psychic scam where the performer pretends to communicate to the dead or move objects with his mind, etc. Is it all just make-believe? Is the Special Olympics just make-believe where the participants and promoters just put on an act?
This sounds more like a feel-good scam, with someone getting rich off the disabled, rather than a genuine competitive sports program, or anything where the participants have anything to be proud of. What are they proud of if the rules dictate from the outset that you can't have real competition but only the symbolism and pretense of it, and the only reason they're having you play is that they feel sorry for you?
Is this what the disabled want? Pity? someone feeling sorry for them and pretending to be impressed by their performance, no matter how deficient it is? Why is this something to be funded with tax dollars?
