I Should be Able to Win the Tour de France
I'd really like to win the Tour de France.
After all, I've been cycling pretty seriously for most of the last quarter-century. Oh, sure, I like beer and fast food more than I like serious suffering. Oh, and I dislike riding in the rain and snow and cold so much, I generally put on ten pounds every winter; even though I take them off again, the cycle certainly does put me well below the international elite in the cycling world.
But what kind of society do we live in when a man has to sacrifice everything even to race internationally, much less ever to win a thing, and much, much less ever to even finish the grandest Tour of them all? And don't even talk to me about genetics; sure, I'm heavily muscled and sweat too much to be an efficient cyclist even when I'm in superb shape. But you're nothing but a Nazi if you dare say that nature has anything to do with my not being on the top of the podium in Paris. Such things ought never be uttered, and anyone who would dare utter them should lose their livelihoods.
Silly arguments? Surely. And the exact things our "intellectuals" have been heralded for shrieking about in the wake of Harvard president Lawrence Summers's comments about the dearth women in top university science positions.
If our intellectuals are blathering morons, where does that leave the country as a whole?
After all, I've been cycling pretty seriously for most of the last quarter-century. Oh, sure, I like beer and fast food more than I like serious suffering. Oh, and I dislike riding in the rain and snow and cold so much, I generally put on ten pounds every winter; even though I take them off again, the cycle certainly does put me well below the international elite in the cycling world.
But what kind of society do we live in when a man has to sacrifice everything even to race internationally, much less ever to win a thing, and much, much less ever to even finish the grandest Tour of them all? And don't even talk to me about genetics; sure, I'm heavily muscled and sweat too much to be an efficient cyclist even when I'm in superb shape. But you're nothing but a Nazi if you dare say that nature has anything to do with my not being on the top of the podium in Paris. Such things ought never be uttered, and anyone who would dare utter them should lose their livelihoods.
Silly arguments? Surely. And the exact things our "intellectuals" have been heralded for shrieking about in the wake of Harvard president Lawrence Summers's comments about the dearth women in top university science positions.
If our intellectuals are blathering morons, where does that leave the country as a whole?
posted by Steady Earl at 9:57 PM
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