I am not kidding: A state legislator in Rhode Island has put forward a piece of legislation that would create a state board for arbitrating disputes between parents in youth sports. Srsly. An honest-to-Shiva taxpayer-funded government panel for refereeing penalty kicks in AYSA soccer, explaining the infield fly rule to Little League moms, and telling the fathers of Pop Warner players that their kid isn't really first-string material and is better suited for playing End Guard Tackle. (That's the guy who sits on the end of the bench, guards the water bucket, and tackles anybody who comes near it.)
Personally, I think anybody who has such a shocking level of immaturity and lack of impulse control that they need to go before a State fricken' Youth Sports Arbitrage Commission to iron out some game of parental push'n'shove at the local soccer field is providing prima facie evidence of their unsuitability as a parent. The kids should be given to real adults before Chip or Muffy can screw them up any worse, and Chip or Muffy should get tossed in the nearest Soylent Green vat, lest they somehow swim upstream to the spawning grounds again.
But that's just me.
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9 comments:
Rhode Island -one of the *least free* states in the freedom survey (http://www.statepolicyindex.com/?page_id=143).
The people there are getting the grubbermint that they deserve-GOOD AND HARD.
If you have a state arbitration panel, then you should not have the legal ability to defend yourself against the drunken lout who decides your kid's parent deserves a beating for his kid's failure to score a goal. After all, you can go to the arbitration board instead of defending yourself from his threatening behavior or actions.
See, the idea is to remove all individual liberty, not to actually defuse conflicts.
Wow. You would never know that the country was spiralling into a depression almost worse than what we named the 'Great Depression'. Nothing like spending the states tax dollars on an unnecessary program that will neither stop the bickering between parents and coaches nor will it solve the issue of parents living their dreams throught their children.
But hey, who am i to say anything. I am not an elected official. I think I am too smart to become one.
Unbelievable. These so-called legislators want to establish a law and spend taxpayers money to settle playground disputes between adults. PLEASE say it isn't so. Another example of a country spiraling out of control. Let's take these so-called adults and put them back in kindergarten. They are not fit to raise children, nor to govern anyone. And as for the parents - here's a novel idea - try actually parenting your own kids - get involved and teach them to PLAY!
Insane - all of it.
F'in' Boomers.
Never had this kind of trouble till Boomers came along.
Bunch 'a' frickin' crybabies, the lot of them, and Bill Clinton is their king. And their kids are the worst.
(Naturally there are exceptions, but they all prove the rule.)
Nathan, just to further my sociology research, are you older or younger than the so-called "Boomers" (who were after all raised by the Greatest Generation, so there was something those Nazi-bashing butches weren't good at)?
We take this whole Yoot Sport regime with, as it were, our mothers' milk. If we hadn't had formula, that is. If participants/spectators at rifle matches acted like this, the sport would be banned. TR famously threatened college football, and just because he was a red fascist doesn't mean he was always wrong. Recently found out the King James who banned shinny in favor of archery practice wasn't the same one who paid for the Bible, outlawed smoking and closed the theaters, so now I feel better.
"Sports" aren't good for kids or families. They distort education public and private, create false heroes who are shitty role models, and encourage a particularly nasty form of collective moral relativism. In Weimar, "Sport Club" was a euphemism for Freikorps, and things ain't changed that much.
Opiate of the masses, anti-republican, European in tooth and claw.
So, on balance, I'm agin 'em.
I AM a Boomer. A late one to be sure, but a Boomer nonetheless. It's a cross I have to bear.
Anyway, I know whereof I speak. I played one youth sport -- baseball, for something like 10 weeks in the summer. My dad was a coach. The kind of behavior being reported was simply not tolerated in those days.
I agree to a point that most youth sports today are wasted time -- as they appear primarily to be a way to get the kids out of the parents' hair. But playing little league baseball in the summer like I did is a long way from playing (variously, as the seasons change) baseball, soccer, basketball, and football like at least one 10-year-old I know does.
Of course I also believe most kids diagnosed with ADHD are just plain BORED. And who wouldn't be, the way school is "taught" these days.
Okay, we can talk then. In 5th grade I learned the term baby-boomer (I also read The Feminine Mystique) and was taught that it defined children born from late 1945 through 1952. Somehow things got stretched out there. I blame the Beatles.
I question the genuine nature of any public ball-game program that kids don't learn in their own neighborhood in vacant lots. My town spends multiple millions per year on a cradle-to-grave bezboll program that "teaches the basics" (Dad's busy) in T-ball starting at age 6. In 40 years that program has produced two brief major league careers, three sports-medicine clinics and countless 3.2% alcoholics. I'm not a pro so I won't try to count divorces and psychologically-significant emotional events, but they have been legion. American Legion. Oh, yes, and there were many trophies.
So long as these silly pastimes are funded by bake sales, admission fees, contributions from enthusiasts and business sponsorships, I don't call for total abolition (yet--don't push me). But not one dollar of tax money, or educational grants, or university endowment should ever go to a sport not based on war.
With you on the A.D.whatever, but consider: sports salesmen invoke the value of letting kids run and play to relieve dull-class syndrome, but any semi-pro junior league coach will talk your leg off on (1)kids who oughta be on ADD medication, and (2)kids who can't learn the game because of (1).
But to get back to the parents...
My mom would die before arguing with one of my coaches. Good grief.
Clearly RI has too much money and politicians without enough "real" governing to do.
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