Friday, July 29, 2005
Too 2am to Have a Title
I would never argue that nintendoing improves anything but interface skills, in the whatever sense interface has. Nor would I argue that nintendoing and any other activity are exclusive. I would argue that the student who nintendos more than s/he should, in the broadest sense of should--well, you know that student.
I would argue that Johnson's argument, if his intent is to locate football or fussbol or ice hockey or air hockey in a culture of violence, requires the burden of proof. And I would argue that no such proof can be found--it has to be complicated. I would argue that hurting a real someone (probably a rare thing in any sport anyway) is more painful, and therefore more valuable, for the aggressor than hurting a TV something. I would argue this on the experience of having had to wrestle a real someone once with but one leg--not the kind of TV ghoul that menaces your imagined you. Ask me sometime what that experience was like for a 16 yr old me.
And no, I wouldn't consider positing football an escape valve, in the same sense as Netherlandisch prostitution, dangerous. I'm not writing that it is the same; I'm writing that this is what kind of argument you invite when you argue as half-assed as I think Johnson might be arguing here.
Doesn't Johnson know that Senator Clinton wants to be the moderate President? Doesn't Johnson know that he wants to sell books? Don't you? Why else claim this or that is ruining our children in sound-bite quips? Because the real reasons take too long to write: the outstanding pressures capital gets to put on labor, the fetishism of moolah, the disintegration of public education, and so on and so on.
Which then if we agree (or not at all) that Johnson is Monday-morning-quarterbacking about where we have gone wrong, then why write it here without appending your position to his?
Will
I would argue that Johnson's argument, if his intent is to locate football or fussbol or ice hockey or air hockey in a culture of violence, requires the burden of proof. And I would argue that no such proof can be found--it has to be complicated. I would argue that hurting a real someone (probably a rare thing in any sport anyway) is more painful, and therefore more valuable, for the aggressor than hurting a TV something. I would argue this on the experience of having had to wrestle a real someone once with but one leg--not the kind of TV ghoul that menaces your imagined you. Ask me sometime what that experience was like for a 16 yr old me.
And no, I wouldn't consider positing football an escape valve, in the same sense as Netherlandisch prostitution, dangerous. I'm not writing that it is the same; I'm writing that this is what kind of argument you invite when you argue as half-assed as I think Johnson might be arguing here.
Doesn't Johnson know that Senator Clinton wants to be the moderate President? Doesn't Johnson know that he wants to sell books? Don't you? Why else claim this or that is ruining our children in sound-bite quips? Because the real reasons take too long to write: the outstanding pressures capital gets to put on labor, the fetishism of moolah, the disintegration of public education, and so on and so on.
Which then if we agree (or not at all) that Johnson is Monday-morning-quarterbacking about where we have gone wrong, then why write it here without appending your position to his?
Will
