Dr. Jill Biden wants BOTH LSU and IOWA WBB to visit White House.

[Dill]

(04-08-2023, 08:23 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Well, unlike baseball, trash talk is inherently part of the modern game of Basketball.  Even in Football, where most of the DBs and WRs come from a Basketball background, trash talk is the norm.  Now, "Dr." Biden, having been awarded a doctorate in Education, should have made it her point to learn and know what she was speaking towards, prior to the ill fated comment.  But alas, she was likely too busy working on more plans for Community College retention rates.

I think you are a bit harsh on DR. Biden here, Sun.

First, aren't CC retention rates really more important for the common good than getting sports talk right?  If we had to choose, surely a president's wife with deep knowledge of and interest in issues of higher education should be preferred over someone with no inkling of all that but a great sports fan.

And second, if your husband's job as leader of the free world places you in many new contexts, at least some of which have to be very
unfamiliar, you are not going to be able to learn about ALL of them to the satisfaction of those familiar with them. In this case, it looks like Dr. Jill was just trying to say something positive, which honored the efforts of both teams. I have to wonder why people want to make a big deal about this. It's not like she said "good people on both sides" at Charlottesville. 

Finally, about "norms"--I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't the norm to denigrate opponents or to brag about oneself. Bad sportsmanship. Though I loved Muhammed Ali and Joe Namath, I remember the widespread anger at their bragging. Johnny U. didn't talk trash. Still it was several decades before that sort of thing was common in football, as people who began imitating that behavior as youth grew into adults. in

And now it is not limited to sports. I'd probably not complain at all if trash talk on this site were limited to the "Smack Talk forum" as good fun, but it often dominates in this one where we ought to expect reasoned debate. Same problem at the national level, where extreme insults have come to be as effective at winning votes as fact-based reasoning--to the degree that that sort of reasoning may now be perceived as a threat rather an ideal everyone should strive for.