PrivateTim

I would say they did a great job in raising Will. How else did he acquire his strong moral sense of right and wrong? Where else did he learn the life skills he has? Where did his study habits come from? I think they did a great job raising JJ as well, lots of great parents have their kids fall to a predator no matter how involved they are with their kids and lots of parents miss the warning signs because they are a lot of same signs of just general teen angst and hormonal assault of puberty. I have said time and again we haven't seen the minutiae of the daily lives of these people. We haven't seen the family vacations (other than Paris and a short Hawaii trip), we haven't seen the trips to Brad and Robbie's and maybe even JP's alma mater and we have skipped years and years of the boys growing up. While they have made mistakes Brad & Robbie and Jeanie are far from bad parents and far from uninvolved. The boys wouldn't have gone to H-W in the first place if they were uninvolved. H-W was a careful choice over many easier, more convenient choices.

Yes actually I can write off most (more than 50%) European FILA referees at the OC category as being dishonest. That is one reason international wrestling uses three officials at a time and they "vote" on the scores. Since the advent of video replays cheating has become harder, but more subtle. A head official can effect the outcome a match by whom he assigns to a particular match and to which position he puts them. I will says that things improved markedly since Milian Ercegan stepped down. Raphi Martinetti and Mario Seletnig have made valient efforts to clean up the sport, but that may come to a halt with Martinetti's resignation.

Google "hyberbole". The point was that with climates you can not talk in decades or even centuries, you have to talk in terms of many millennia. To quote Benji's favorite scientific source.

I think you put far too much faith in Wikipedia....

By that logic, why would there ever need to be an Olympics for any sport? Sports like swimming, wrestling, gymnastics, figure skating, etc ONLY get recognition every four years. Many people can rattle off Olympic champions in those sports, but how many can name the World Champion from the years preceding or anteceding the Olympics? That is why sports like tennis and golf don't belong in the Olympics, especially when the pros are invited, maybe even basketball for the men. Those athletes get attention, accolades and fat endorsement contracts every year. For Zombie, track down Malcolm Morley, he'll have a story or two or ten for you about wrestling on the Continent.

Good to see your ignorance extends to many fields, it is important to be well rounded

Wrestling has only had 6 or 7 incidents of drug usage vs about 40 for both Athletics (track & field for Americans) and weightlifting. And few medals have been stripped in wrestling, but too many to count in weightlifting and athletics. Cycling isn't much better. No, doping was not the reason. And yes, the IOC would be greatly less corrupt with a Canadian or American or two on the board. The IOC has been famously corrupt. In the wrestling world European coaches clamor over getting a Canadian or American referee because they know they will get an honest official. The same can not be said for most European officials. Blood doping would be of no advantage to a wrestler, you see blood doping in mostly endurance sports like cycling and long distance running. Until 2012 every violation in wrestling had been for a form of steroids. In 2012 an Uzebeky wrestler was using a newly banned stimulant. The bitch for him is that the stimulent is often used in enery drinks and bars and not listed under the banned name as an ingredient. It is pretty easy to violate WADA rules if someone is not monitoring you on a regular basis. Almost any US over the counter cold medication could make you test positive.

Gee, good thing they didn't show 500 years ago then, when there was no ice in Greenland, hence the name "green land". It was a real tough time for ice lovers.

I think one of the keys for an abuser is to find kids who don't feel special and make them feel special, "you're my favorite", "you are special" and so on. Even if they know there are others, they get reassured "they are the ONE". In some cases there are group activities with the "special group" and they all know they are "special", but one one they get assured that they are the favorite. I can't see David being involved, but does anyone know where Shane Jackson's mom was??

Well frankly I am disappointed.... sex, violence, pedophilia and cutting... I think Arbour is just hunting for a network deal Actually, that was one terrific chapter, maybe one of the best ever. JJ is suddenly more interesting and multi-dimensional, Will continues to grow and show development, Nana as a fixture at Escorial and part of the family, a lesson learned on vigilantism and a guilt free result.

I would politely suggest that anyone who thinks Los Angeles is 70% white or anything close to it has never been to Los Angeles or only visited Hancock Park and closed their eyes on the entire drive from LAX.

It is nice you did some homework, but...... that "Some Other Race, Hispanic: 23.5" is made up of "blatinos" (black latinos) like Dominicans, Haitians, etc and Mexicans and the like who have intermarried with African Americans and another significant chunk of the "some other race Hispanics are the Mestizos which is not a choice offered by the demographers. There might be other wise "white" Hispanics who choose not to classify as "white Hispanics", but I think that would be a very small number. You want to have fun with demographics, play with the LAUSD numbers; only 33% are native English speakers, only 25% are considered "fluent", 33% are "English Learners" (which means they can't understand enough of the language to learn in English) and 10% are in transition between being fluent and not. Less than 10% of the students in LAUSD are white.

Just so we are clear on the facts, whites including Hispanics who identify as white are only 48% in LA, whites, not including Hispanics are only 28% in LA. I don't care that Matt's ego took it hit it is his fault. That is the risk you run when you want your cake and you want to eat it too (open relationship). You risk your partner finding someone better.

Ummm, Persians and Arabs are white, just like Mexicans. But that is yesterdays news. I think it will turn out that Brad didn't have the skating coach whacked, that it was either a happy coincidence, suicide or someone else took him out. Feel bad for the mother/wife, but I suspect she knew or had suspicions and I really bet her father knew, maybe not knew to a certainty, but knew in his heart, but couldn't make the accusations without proof.

Hiking is a sport? Squash isn't modern and baseball isn't either. By the criterion the IOC is supposed to use, how universal is a sport, wrestling is one of the most universal. Wrestling is on every populated continent and in most countries. In London, 29 different countries medaled in wrestling out of 72 possible medals. No other sport comes colse for such diversity. Only 10 countries won medals in swimming with 102 medals awarded; only 14 countries won medals in Gymnastics (Artistic) and Gymnastics (Rhytmic) is a complete joke, 6 medals were awarded, 5 to Belarus & Russia and one Italian. 15 years ago it would have been a USSR intersquad match. Syncronized swimming is a complete joke. It was started by one person, Esther Williams and based on her B grade movies of the 1940s and 50s. Tennis should be dropped from the Olympics. Who needs to see the same overpaid pros we see week in week out. Golf shouldn't be added for the same reason, over paid pros. How did wrestling get dropped? There are no wrestlers on the IOC executive board. Why didn't a sport that no one participates in (modern pentathlon) survive? Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr (IOC board member, son of former IOC prez JAS Sr) is president of the international modern pentathlon association. Hmmmm. Current IOC prez Jacques Rogge is a former rugby player (an added sport), hmmm, and four executive board members are squash players another four are golfers, hmmmmm some more. There are no North Americans on the IOC executive board and ten Europeans, including two Germans, despite the fact US television supplies the IOC with over 1/3 of its budget. In fact there is only one person from the entire Western Hemisphere on the IOC executive board.

Well that was an interesting twist. I still don't feel bad for Matt. He has no right to act as he did to Wade. He is entitled to his feelings, but not to let the resentment bleed over.

Get over yourself. I live in Los Angeles where being white means you ARE a minority, You have no fucking idea what discrimination I've experienced in LA, Micronesia or Polynesia or what I've experienced among people who've seldom seen a caucasian person before. My reaction to who John would date was a reaction to who John has been presented as and that is someone shallow and immature. I find your ignorance and assumptions incredibly offensive based on the very narrow life you've led in a 40 mile band of a country that spans almost 4,000,000,000 square miles. I know you mean well, but your very limited life experience limits you. Have you ever actually been to Manila? Do you even know what Pinoy culture is like and about? Grow up, travel and get back to me.

You are in the wrong part of the country to be a Pinoy. You wouldn't have the same experience in So Cal or Hawaii, people would probably guess your ethnicity (not race, I don't believe there is Pil-a-pino race) fairly accurately or they'd guess you something Hispanic maybe, which wouldn't be too far off given the Spanish involvement in the Philippines. Mexican is a nationality, not a race, Hispanic is a cutlure, not a race, Filipino is a nationality, not a race. What is a race is even up to dispute, but there are plenty of Mexicans whiter than me and plenty of whites that are very dark. In 1950 we went from 3 basic races, white (Caucasoid), black (Negroid) and Asian (Mongoloid) to over 5,000 "ethnic" groupings (according to the UN). Arabs are semites and therefore white by classification. And sorry, I reject the whole "you don't know what it is like" line of thinking. it is 'woe is me' claptrap, you don't know what is like to be a stutterer, or painfully shy, or fat or skinny or to have bad skin or to have bad eye sight or to have freckles or to be too young or to old or........ well you get the idea. EVERYONE has something that they can be discrimated for. Every community I know of discriminates and the gay community is one of the worst, ask any bi man about that. I doubt that if Darius walked into Quickie Mart in the deepest of the deep South that anyone would think him an Arab, again, more likely an Italian or maybe even Black Irish.

It is far more than do-able, it happens. not every house on every campus has openly gay members, but there are a good number of openly gay fraternity boys these days and a whole bunch in the closet. I guess I wasn't quite clear. Not only does Darius not identify with his Persian side, but no one associates him as being Persian. As a mixed race kid (and there are a bunch of half white, half Persian guys running around LA) Darius probably looks Italian to most people and the people who know him and his family probably don't think of him as Persian because he doesn't look like or act like the pure Persian kids (of which LA also has a lot). Of course we don't know what Darius looks like except inside our own minds, I just know what the half white/half Persian guys in LA look like and what the pure Persians look like and especially how the pure Persians act in LA. Don't you watch the Shahs of Sunset? I thought you were Mexican B1ue? Certainly people can tell the difference between a Mexican and an Arab?

Yes and no. I went to national conventions in college and to our leadership school when I was in college and have been back at leadership school as an instructor twice and to a national convention too. The music director from our national headquarters makes Stef look butch and I've served twice on the board of the "province" here in So Cal (USC, UCLA, Oxy, Cal St LA, CSUN, etc) and they too have much more diverse populations than my grandparents experienced when they were at USC and even diverse from my parent's days in the 70's.

It would be nice to see Will and Darius learn that sometimes you have to take orders from other people. I am guessing you weren't in a fraternity? My house in Berkeley had Asian, African American, Jewish, gay. Armenian and even some Democrats. This idea of fraternities and soroities as these WASPy institutions hasn't been true since the mid 1960's probably. Does Darius have any identification at all with his Persian side? Does he think of himself as a Persian American? We've certainly never seen it and has anyone ever treated him like a Persian? By the way, Persians are not Arabs..... you never want to make that mistake.

It was a good chapter and one thing we've kind of glossed over as Jeannie has become the Wicked Witch of the West, is how Brad consistently undermined her authority with Will as Will planned the parent game. It is especially important in their cases because Brad and Jeannie never had a normal marital relationship, it was still more like employer and employee. It is therefore nice to see Will have a tender moment with the only mother he'll ever have.

So this isn't the Soapbox and don't want to turn Mark's Forum into Soapbox Lite, but the point was that when ROTC was a required course at Yale, Harvard, et al, it exposed an elite that otherwise had little exposure, to military service. A good number of officers in WWII, Korea and Vietnam came out of the Ivy League. That dropped off once the ROTC was pushed off campus and it wasn't until 9-11 that you saw a return of some of those Ivy Leaguers

Matt is reaping what he sowed. Wade would have been fine with monogamy, but Matt wasn't and now he is singing the Open Relationship Blues. It would have made me dislike Tony even more since he would be jealous of Noah and possesive of Will without cause. Tony thinks he can have his bimbo and Will will always be there for a nice roll in the hay. Will is already more mature than Tony and progressing. There was a jump immediately post 9-11, but that wasn't the biggest shift, it was that a number of college kids, professionals etc decided to sign up. I do so miss the Soapbox because I'd love to talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences, which is the most ignored universal law in Washington DC. The same left that threw the ROTC out of Harvard, Yale, Princeton etc later complained that the sons and daughters of the elite were not in the armed forces. There was a time that ROTC was a required course at Yale et al. 9-11 did serve to get a higher quality recruit for a while. The Post 9-11 American Serviceman

Just Google "judge rips ncaa in USC investigation" and you get a boat load.