The losing team had learning disabilities and problems paying attention...not missing limbs or blindness. There was apparently nothing wrong with them physically..or nothing stated as such in the article. When I was growing up, back when alcoholism was a social maladjustment and not a "disease", when people who spilled hot coffee on themselves were not awarded tons on money for trying to drive and drive hot coffee at the same time, when the funny pages were funny and not politically correct and tainted with Prozac....the word "handicapped" applied to a heck of a lot fewer conditions than it does today. Now, everyone with a mole on their left foot is handicapped, everyone with one nostral larger than the other is handicapped, everyone with a crooked tooth is handicapped.
Back then, someone with a learning disability was told to try harder in school, someone with attention disorders was told to pay attention....not given drugs and special treatment. I don't think the words Attention Deficit Disorder even existed back in those days, at least not in the poor Apalachian county I grew up in. Heck, I had severe speech problems and dislexia...and no one considered me to be disabled. I was sent to speech therapy for 2 hours a day, 4 days a week. I was given metal retraining to improve my ability to read and write "normally"....I was not put into special classes so that I could receive an education...I was given tools to cope with my severe stuttering, my backwards reading, and my way wonky hand writing. I wan't disabled, I played baseball, football, soccer, basketball, went hunting and fishing...and if I lost a game, or if I missed a shot at a buck...I didn't becry my disabilities...I practiced my batting more, I practiced my layups more, I spent more time with my bow in hand putting arrows into an old pie plate.
I just don't comprehend all this ballyhoo that the winning team should have back off their game to give the loosers a chance to look better. What bunk! That is the kind of "competitive thinking" that has seen the US become less competitive in the world markets, why the American scholastics level has declined over the last 10, 15 years....we used to be one of the top ranked nations in terms of academic standards....take a look at where we are today.
This whole "feel good", "poor me, I'm a victim" and "It's not my fault I'm fat, drunk, ugly, stupid, pregnent, poor, lazy, uneducated (the list goes on and on for all the things that are now "diseases" and "disabilities)" is not going to produce the kind of scientists, leaders, teachers, thinkers, inventors that will keep America strong. It will only result in a nation full of fat, lazy, drunk, depressed "victims" popping Prozac and other "feel good" pills and drawing Social Security due to their "disabilites".
A couple years ago, I worked with a young woman whose boyfriend, who had just gotten out of jail for the third time...was awarded Social Security Disability because he could not work due to having a pin in this thumb...yet that pin in his thumb did not prevent him from selling drugs and committing burglaries. This mid-20s dope dealer got a monthly check, yet a lady that I know, who has lost her right foot and half her left leg to diabetes, was denied Social Security because she wasn't disabled enough.
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