Letters to the Editor
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El Cid
I want to see Glen Greenwald post a photo of himself in shorts and a T-shirt. Nothing eleaborate. Don't make us rely on the stupid cartoon caricature.
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Let’s send all of the worthless, subhuman fat pigs to fight the war. That would solve every problem.
I knew the Anti-Fat Brigade would make their voices heard, as soon as I saw the photos posted in today’s blog. Welcome AFB! And more power to you! You defenders of rational principles have led me to the solution for the Iraq war problem. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?
As pantanal writes, “These guys are very much like a disheveled, grossly overweight couch potato whose most strenuous exercise a walk from his TV set to the kitchen to get more beer and potato chips. He sits in front of his television, screaming at the supremely conditioned players on the screen to hit each other even harder and more viciously.”
Of course, pantanal is right. By virtue of their appalling physical attributes, fat men are possessed of any and every moral failing that you can imagine. It is a truth universally acknowledged that physical and moral repulsiveness go hand in hand. As Anonymous says, “Kagan's obesity is … an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual deformity.” And from dhbecker, “the Kagans look as loathsome as their writings are.” Obviously, fat men have vicious propensities and will sit and cheer on violence anywhere they see it. They do no good in our communities; they are of no value to anyone. They are not supremely conditioned, after all. Let’s send them overseas to be cannon fodder!
And as lichen informs us, “It's obvious from their big chins and thick necks that as a group they don't appear to get nearly enough exercise or look all that healthy.” Thanks for the observation! Well of course, we are all worried about the health of the fatties. I stay awake at night thinking about it so much—I really suffer for these people. But since these lazy fat slobs can’t seem to make the requisite changes to become acceptable to the rest of us, they should be made to fight our wars for us. We healthy people should be given precedence when it comes to who lives and who dies, truly. Because we are better than they—it’s just a fact of life. And we need to keep reminding them.
And Denning is quite right to attach the descriptive term “slob” to the word “fat” whenever s/he mentions it. We don’t really have to know anything specific about a fat person’s personal habits to be absolutely certain that he or she is a slob. And we can be quite certain about the psychological makeup of fat people as well, as pantanal demonstrates: “They weer the out of shape wimps who would remind the teacher she forgot to assign the class homework. They were the creepy boys who would stay around after school to search the trash cans for used sanitary napkins to sniff and rub over their faces. They look at the troops … and their message is:'you guys want to come home? fight your way back, you losers.’” Absolutely, the fat people are all perverted sanitary napkin sniffers who are just simmering with rage at all of us Normal People. They will rise up one day and go postal on our asses. Why not harness that rage and send them to war?
So go ahead, every time you see a fat person on the street, make sure you sneer and make a joke with your friend. Don’t even bother trying to hide your disgust; it doesn’t matter if you make it obvious. The fat person will know anyway—it’s not like it doesn’t happen every day with predictable, wearying, crushing regularity.
And be sure to applaud when a prospective employer doesn’t hire a fat person because of his or her weight. It is perfectly legal, after all, and 40% of employers recently polled said that they would do so. Fat people are not entitled to anything, and certainly not to make a living.
And of course, laugh heartily at all of our hilarious pop culture portrayals of fat people. Because even though some of you misguided folks might imagine that living as our culture’s numero uno objects of contempt, without even the benefit of belonging to any kind of closely knit subculture for support and companionship, might make those revolting fat people more isolated, introspective, or socially timid. But no! The images in TV and films—of demanding, greedy, bigoted, spoiled, vicious, rapacious, untalented, stupid, lazy, face-stuffing blobs—they are all accurate. For instance, men all know that they cannot look a fat woman in the eyes when they are forced to talk to her: that will give the foolish, desperate, horny cow a signal to jump their bones. Can’t have that.
Fat people: they already suffer a social death, why not take it a step further and make it a real death? It is the least they could do for the rest of us. Ship them all off to Iraq! Forever! They would save the fit men and women from the horrors of war, and we would have the added benefit of not having to look at them any more.
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Fred Kaplan (Slate) had an article in the NYT Magazine in August on problems brewing in the upcoming leadership classes
it's archived but available on TimesSelect or pay to play ... possibly mirrored somewhere
article: Challenging the Generals (08/26/2007)
url: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30813FF3B5B0C758EDDA10894DF404482
Challenges like this are rare in the military, which depends on obedience and hierarchy. Yet the scene at Fort Knox reflected a brewing conflict between the Army's junior and senior officer corps -- lieutenants and captains on one hand, generals on the other, with majors and colonels (''field-grade officers'') straddling the divide and sometimes taking sides. The cause of this tension is the war in Iraq, but the consequences are broader. They revolve around the obligations of an officer, the nature of future warfare and the future of the Army itself. And these tensions are rising at a time when the war has stretched the Army's resources to the limit, when junior officers are quitting at alarming rates and when political leaders are divided or uncertain about America's -- and its military's -- role in the world.
Fred Kaplan is the national security columnist for Slate and author of the forthcoming book ''Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.''
The article is worth reading ... and has to do a great deal with difficulties moving the thinking along from set-piece rehersal based conventional combat to more training "creative" thinking... the hierarchy that placed combat leadership far far ahead of military diplomatic and other leadership for advancement ... and more ... irrc, the elite military leadership college student and graduates are defecting, opting out of military careers at an unprecendented rate.
One of our problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan is the problems developing just these sorts of middle-grade trained and gaining experience leaders ....