The Patriot Games

Did anyone watch this disaster? I just watched a twenty-minute highlight show that ran about twenty minutes too long. They said the games were contested by the top male and female athletes from each state, but at least 115 athletes were involved. I've no idea how the athletes were selected, but anyone observing couldn't help but notice the field was about 90% white. The games were actually held earlier in the week, so ABC had days to put together a coherent hour-long show, but instead we got to watch a distracted teenage girl tossing a mini-basketball at a hoop about three feet away. The final challenge was a poorly designed American ninja-style obstacle course, with each obstacle supposedly featuring historical references. As the first two contestants failed to finish the course, the remaining players could simply walk it. The winners got to stand on a podium with Trump, although he barely acknowledged them, recieved tiny dime-store trophies and a check for $125,000.
This concludes America's 250th Birthday celebrations.

The boy representing Puerto Rico lives in Texas, and the girl representing Massachusetts is from California. The participants didn't compete to get to the games; they were selected from videos they submitted. One common theme seen in the videos of those selected is their profession of love for Jesus and our President.
Roughly 92% of the country's high school students attend public schools, but the athletes selected by the unnamed committee overwhelmingly attend Christian schools.
Some participants were given instructions on the various events a month ago and had time to practice, while others were told the only definite event would be the 100-yard dash. The rules for some events made no sense. Dodgeball was said to be a team event, but some members from winning teams were eliminated, while a few from losing teams advanced.

I saw most of it on ESPN+. The qualifying rounds came across as an attempt to bring back the old Presidential Physical Fitness Test:
100m dash
55m hurdles
Medicine Ball throw for distance (I don't think they ever said how much it weighed)
Standing Long Jump
Shuttle Run (5m to the left or right, then 10m in the other direction, then 5m back in the original direction)
Arm Hang (how long you could keep your chin above a chin-up bar)
The first three were never part of any PPFT I ever heard of; the standing long jump was; the shuttle run was modified (in my day, the lines were 3 feet (elementary/middle school) or 4 feet (high school) apart, and you just moved your feet left and right for 10 seconds); the hang was for girls, while boys did pull-ups.
The missing events were sit-ups, push-ups against a chair seat, and a distance run (at first, how far you could run in 6 minutes; this was later changed to a mile run).

I don't see what the point of the team events was (and note that you scored points for each win, so it wasn't a question of every person on a team either advanced or was eliminated).
I also don't see why they needed an ANW-style course for the finals, although they were not based on "historical references"; they just had historically-sounding names, in keeping with the whole Patriot Games thing.

What surprised me the most: while the detractors compared it to the Hunger Games, nobody made the connection to Jack Ryan.

However, there is an obvious reason why they didn't have any qualifying events to get in; you know that at least one state would have made it a point to put a transgender girl as its female representative, and either dare the organizers to test them, or, if she won, dare Trump to try and take away the scholarship.

I didn't watch it, but I get it. This was not for "top athletes," as in varsity athletes, as I'm pretty sure the top couple of high school athletes from each state will already be getting full scholarships.

Seems like the intent was not to feature competitive sports, which we have a lot of and aren't for everybody, but to promote youth physical fitness, which can be for everybody and which has become an issue in these times. I've heard people say "There didn't used to be fat people" and I know that's not true. There were lots of fat people, even when over half of adults were on the Benson & Hedges Diet. It was fat kids that were uncommon, and this I know because I was a slightly fat kid and wondered why I could see everybody else's ribs in gym class. But what I see coming out of schools these days, wow kids, here let me show you how to play stickball in the street all day like we used to, anything that isn't sedentary.

So the right way to pick these kids is to find one that look nice, will act nice, and will not distract from the message with politics or any other causes that may be divisive.

Picking mostly white, mostly Christian obsequious youths that don't even live in the states or territories they supposedly represent belies the "will not distract from the message with politics or any other causes that may be divisive" objective.

But, to be fair, the girl from CA who represented MA did indeed say her favorite team is the Boston Celtics. So she isn't completely a lost cause.

Quote: GenoDRPh

Picking mostly white, mostly Christian obsequious youths that don't even live in the states or territories they supposedly represent belies the "will not distract from the message with politics or any other causes that may be divisive" objective.

Oh I get it! In a country where the majority is White and the majority is Christian, something must be terribly wrong if a sample selected by any criteria other than race and religion ends up being mostly White and mostly Christian. Can't wait to hear this brilliant mathematical deduction applied to gaming.

Quote: GenoDRPh

But, to be fair, the girl from CA who represented MA did indeed say her favorite team is the Boston Celtics....

What's that now, about mostly White?

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: GenoDRPh

Picking mostly white, mostly Christian obsequious youths that don't even live in the states or territories they supposedly represent belies the "will not distract from the message with politics or any other causes that may be divisive" objective.

Oh I get it! In a country where the majority is White and the majority is Christian, something must be terribly wrong if a sample selected by any criteria other than race and religion ends up being mostly White and mostly Christian. Can't wait to hear this brilliant mathematical deduction applied to gaming.

Quote: GenoDRPh

But, to be fair, the girl from CA who represented MA did indeed say her favorite team is the Boston Celtics....

What's that now, about mostly White?
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Their skin color and religion were the predominant selection criteria. It certainly wan't athletic ability alone.

Quote: GenoDRPh

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: GenoDRPh

Picking mostly white, mostly Christian obsequious youths that don't even live in the states or territories they supposedly represent belies the "will not distract from the message with politics or any other causes that may be divisive" objective.

Oh I get it! In a country where the majority is White and the majority is Christian, something must be terribly wrong if a sample selected by any criteria other than race and religion ends up being mostly White and mostly Christian. Can't wait to hear this brilliant mathematical deduction applied to gaming.

Quote: GenoDRPh

But, to be fair, the girl from CA who represented MA did indeed say her favorite team is the Boston Celtics....

What's that now, about mostly White?
link to original post

Their skin color and religion were the predominant selection criteria. It certainly wan't athletic ability alone.
link to original post

That's brilliant! The OP acknowledges he watched 20 minutes of a preview, threw out an offhand, colloquial statistic of "90% white," and you can tell what the predominant selection criteria were! Especially being that race is strictly a matter of self-identification in the US and you can't always tell by looking. And as far as their religion- I believe Bill is a Dominican, so maybe he was there for the auto-da-fe, that's it! Nothing like a good bastinado to get a person's true creed out of them.

You know, I think the predominant selection criterion might have been "Was interested enough in the event to apply to be in it." And after that, being this was a fitness centered event you would have needed a recommendation from a coach that you were athletic enough to do the drills (NOT a state champion athlete, they all spend their summers in travel leagues and training for a professional athletic career), and then you wrote an essay, and after that the selection was probably more or less random.

They may very well have not used race and religion as criteria. After all, since the applicant has to be interested in participating in the event, and this event is yet another stupid failure by our braindead narcissist President, they will self-select to be almost entirely white and from a Christian school. Not that those are bad traits per se, it's that they correlate very highly with his followers.

Quote: KevinAA

They may very well have not used race and religion as criteria. After all, since the applicant has to be interested in participating in the event, and this event is yet another stupid failure by our braindead narcissist President, they will self-select to be almost entirely white and from a Christian school. Not that those are bad traits per se, it's that they correlate very highly with his followers.
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This is political speech.

Quote: KevinAA

and this event is yet another stupid failure by our braindead narcissist President,
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(excerpted!)

Political speech. 7 days.

These few words barely questioned the cognitive fitness or mental acuity of a political figure, while they are very important to playing a winning blackjack game. Therefore, I would kindly ask the administrators to loose up the punishment to three days.

Quote: aceside

These few words barely questioned the cognitive fitness or mental acuity of a political figure, while they are very important to playing a winning blackjack game. Therefore, I would kindly ask the administrators to loose up the punishment to three days.
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This hardly seems like KevinAA's first time at the rodeo.

This lacks even the backhanded courtesy of calling the "honorable gentleman" a scurvy cur.

I'm not sure what this event was called, but it went something like this.
Kick a football at a large pillow target about fifteen feet away, sprint to a designated spot where you had to catch three flyballs someone with a wiffle ball bat hit right at you, one at a time. You then grabbed a football and negotiated a couple of static tackling dummies before encountering a series of six-inch steps you had to somehow jump over. Then you reversed direction and did the second obstacle backward before throwing the football at a slow-moving truck. You then blasted a wiffle ball off a tee and ran around a baseball diamond with the bases maybe 50 feet apart.
It would be funny if the US taxpayers weren't stuck paying for this sideshow and were on the hook for $250,000 for two "athletes" who don't seem capable of playing at a Division 1 level. The female winner is going to play soccer for a Division 2school, and the boy plays tennis at his country club and hopes to be a ballroom dance instructor.
Rumor is most of the kids weren't told what to expect, except that a 100-yard sprint would be involved, while a small number recieved more details about how to train for these unusual tests of athletic prowess.

Quote: billryan

I'm not sure what this event was called, but it went something like this.
Kick a football at a large pillow target about fifteen feet away, sprint to a designated spot where you had to catch three flyballs someone with a wiffle ball bat hit right at you, one at a time. You then grabbed a football and negotiated a couple of static tackling dummies before encountering a series of six-inch steps you had to somehow jump over. Then you reversed direction and did the second obstacle backward before throwing the football at a slow-moving truck. You then blasted a wiffle ball off a tee and ran around a baseball diamond with the bases maybe 50 feet apart.
It would be funny if the US taxpayers weren't stuck paying for this sideshow and were on the hook for $250,000 for two "athletes" who don't seem capable of playing at a Division 1 level. The female winner is going to play soccer for a Division 2school, and the boy plays tennis at his country club and hopes to be a ballroom dance instructor.
Rumor is most of the kids weren't told what to expect, except that a 100-yard sprint would be involved, while a small number recieved more details about how to train for these unusual tests of athletic prowess.
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As described, it reminds me of this show from the 70s called "Almost Anything Goes" where teams from small towns across the US compete in non-serious athletic events, stuff like climbing up a rope while being drenched with a hose.

So a couple of kids got scholarships. Many more will be getting them, for having AI write an essay about the effects of global warming on constipated cockroaches in Cambodia or something. At least these kids are good examples. Now everyone in a public school can beg off from gym class and as I hear most of them do. They're cheating themselves, not only out of physical improvement, but out of all the amusing memories we have of gym classes and gym teachers.

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: GenoDRPh

Quote: AutomaticMonkey

Quote: GenoDRPh

Picking mostly white, mostly Christian obsequious youths that don't even live in the states or territories they supposedly represent belies the "will not distract from the message with politics or any other causes that may be divisive" objective.

Oh I get it! In a country where the majority is White and the majority is Christian, something must be terribly wrong if a sample selected by any criteria other than race and religion ends up being mostly White and mostly Christian. Can't wait to hear this brilliant mathematical deduction applied to gaming.

Quote: GenoDRPh

But, to be fair, the girl from CA who represented MA did indeed say her favorite team is the Boston Celtics....

What's that now, about mostly White?
link to original post

Their skin color and religion were the predominant selection criteria. It certainly wan't athletic ability alone.
link to original post

That's brilliant! The OP acknowledges he watched 20 minutes of a preview, threw out an offhand, colloquial statistic of "90% white," and you can tell what the predominant selection criteria were! Especially being that race is strictly a matter of self-identification in the US and you can't always tell by looking. And as far as their religion- I believe Bill is a Dominican, so maybe he was there for the auto-da-fe, that's it! Nothing like a good bastinado to get a person's true creed out of them.

You know, I think the predominant selection criterion might have been "Was interested enough in the event to apply to be in it." And after that, being this was a fitness centered event you would have needed a recommendation from a coach that you were athletic enough to do the drills (NOT a state champion athlete, they all spend their summers in travel leagues and training for a professional athletic career), and then you wrote an essay, and after that the selection was probably more or less random.
link to original post

Did you even bother to look up what thr selction criterai was? Probabbaly not.

Never ever offer me whatever it is you're taking.

Quote: billryan

I'm not sure what this event was called, but it went something like this.
Kick a football at a large pillow target about fifteen feet away, sprint to a designated spot where you had to catch three flyballs someone with a wiffle ball bat hit right at you, one at a time. You then grabbed a football and negotiated a couple of static tackling dummies before encountering a series of six-inch steps you had to somehow jump over. Then you reversed direction and did the second obstacle backward before throwing the football at a slow-moving truck. You then blasted a wiffle ball off a tee and ran around a baseball diamond with the bases maybe 50 feet apart.
link to original post

It was called "Varsity Circuit." There was another round called "Operation Endurance," which looked more like an Army/Marine obstacle course.

You left out some steps:
Kicking soccer balls that stuck to a target; the target had 1, 3, and 5-point zones, and you kept kicking until you scored 5 points
Serving volleyballs (from the right side of the service line, which is how it was done for decades) until you served three inside the opponent's side of the court