Tarmoh: "I'm always going to remember my first Olympics as the year when my 100-meter spot was taken away from me.''

a couple brief things- I thought the same basic thing as Wilbon on PTI- once they changed the time for Felix one way or another no matter what she was going to be in and Tarmoh was going to be out.

Also i didnt like the fact that she emailed in to say she wasnt doing it. Who actually wrote that email and under what circumstances?

Also if you think any of this mess(changing times,appeals etc) would have happened if Felix had been the one originally in 3rd and Tarmoh 4th then I have some swampland for you to take a look at.

She still should have run the runoff(if nothing else for the good of the sport-maybe hard to think about when youre potentially getting screwed)but its also def ok for her to be pissed.

1. Just because I'm disagreeing with you and suggesting that your decision to call an athlete 'Tard' is both inappropriate and a disservice to your points (as well as your respectability) does not make me sanctimonious.

2. I am not appointing myself the arbiter of anything; I am not claiming I am in any exclusive position to judge anything, either. No where in any of my posts did I say anything to that effect.

The only authority I am propping my points on--so far as they concern your use of the word 'tard' to refer to Tarmoh--is common linguistic usage. If someone were to come up to you in the street and call you 'tard,' what would your first reaction be? I have a suspicion it would not be to think they mean you are not as emotionally developed as other men and women your age; and you would not be wrong in this.

It's simply a fact of conventional colloquial English that 'tard' refers derisively to the mentally handicapped; saying that you mean it to refer to Tarmoh's emotional state doesn't really redeem the insult in any way. The 'basic definition' you claim to be citing is the basic dictionary definition of 'retard,' but there is a much more overtly derogatory sense when you abbreviate it to 'tard.' Again, I am not appointing myself an authority; I am simply basing my claims on contemporary colloquial usage of English.

3. You're right to say that I haven't cited much other evidentiary support to most of what I've been saying; the reason for that is because the primary piece of evidence I am zeroing in on--and trying to refute--is your own derogation of an athlete by way of the insults 'tard' and 'POS.'

If you are in need of concrete evidence that Tarmoh is neither of those things, then let me point out that Tarmoh is, for all of this controversy, rather well-spoken; she is, additionally, a graduate of Texas A&M University. These two facts, in combination, suggest that Tarmoh hardly deserves the epithet 'tard.' Additionally, human fecal matter cannot sprint, talk, or rightly claim to be robbed of anything, since the law grants POS's no rights of possession.

That having been said, it remains a bit disingenuous of you to accuse me both of 'pars[ing] evidence' and of ignoring evidence altogether. If I never resort to evidence, how could I also be parsing evidence, too?

4. I make no claims of being judge, jury, and executioner. I welcome other opinions, and I never post on here in the hope that no one disagrees with me; I welcome it, but it would also be disingenuous of me to pretend that I don't welcome agreement, either.

Again, though, and more importantly--my point is that your slanders of Tarmoh are excessive, cruel, and not nearly as 'elegant' as you would like to think. A subsidiary point is that calling Tarmoh 'POS' and 'tard' does a disservice to your opinions rather than a condensing them, since it reduces them to mere mudslinging.

5. I've interacted with plenty of people in my life, as well, with athletes and non-athletes alike, and I too have judged human behavior for some time--though I doubt I am as old as you are. Still, I don't take that to qualify me to be a judge of whether someone is a 'tard' or a 'POS.'

I think it is perfectly acceptable--inevitable, in fact--to judge someone based purely on the actions you have seen; really, there is no other option. But judging is one thing and attacking is another.

6. I will never post my education or credentials on this board in an attempt to bully someone into accepting my points.

7. Claiming my posts as 'oh so much b.s.' to which you feel no compulsions to respond is your easy way out of an argument that you are visibly frustrated to be losing.

Harry, you are right about Sprintgeezer.

But your attempts to convince him are now making you look a bit off-kilter. It should be clear that anyone immature enough to call a stranger a Tardmo or whatever he said will never concede that he was being an immature bully to some stranger on the internet, no matter how many bulleted points are used.

So, let it go.

You are incredible.

I just read your post.

I will give you the opportunity to revise it if you wish, before I address its content, probably tomorrow.

Sleep tight, Harry.

Unbiased Observer--

You're right. As you might be able to tell, this is the first time I've ever allowed myself to get drawn into this sort of back and forth.

I appreciate the advice and point taken.

Happens to the best of us.

"At a relay in Monaco last week, the Felix-to-Tarmoh pass was shaky and the Tarmoh-to-Jeter pass was not completed. It was unclear who might have been at fault."

At this point Layden loses all credibility to comment on anything Tarmoh-related.

SG--

They're right of course. Tard is not an accurate description of Tarmoh. I don't think she's retarded. I think she fully understands that she ALMOST got very lucky when a superior athlete that had an off day and an official screw-up almost let her walk away with an Olympic slot that she had not earned, and that lightning was not likely to strike again, particularly after 21.69.

I prefer to use the more accurate term:

Spoiled brat.

The person I feel sorry for right now is Jon Drummond.

Blinded by Bias wrote:

"At a relay in Monaco last week, the Felix-to-Tarmoh pass was shaky and the Tarmoh-to-Jeter pass was not completed. It was unclear who might have been at fault."

At this point Layden loses all credibility to comment on anything Tarmoh-related.

At this point I'd say Layden loses all credibility to comment on anything period. All you have to do is watch the Monaco video on youtube.

Harry Carey wrote:

No--I've been coming to these boards for years, and have generally kept my mouth shut whenever I stumbled upon SprintGeezer's idiocy.

But enough is enough. I see no reason why athletes should not be given the benefit of the doubt in situations, nor do I see any reason why a corruption of an athlete's name can be honestly construed as 'reasoned.' This is the behavior that earns this message board, its posters, Rojo, and Wejo the reputation they have.

Exactly.

Do you know Jeneba, personally? And were you in the room when all of the Olympic Trial talks about a run-off went down?

Sprintgeezer wrote:

The name-calling is, however, an elegant encapsulation of the spirit of the opinion.

.

You are a worthless piece of sh!t I wouldn't even waste my time smearing into the ground

[quote]Sprintgeezer wrote:

"What she's been through"?

She hasn't been through anything that anyone else who was in the race who didn't qualify hasn't gone through.

She had a very fair chance for a race off and didn't take it.

Harry, I don't have the time for a good response today, but don't listen to the idiots on this board who would have you forego meaningful dialogue.

Good for you, that you called me out. I can tell by not only what you posted, but by how you posted, that you actually seem to want genuine dialogue.

Don't let anybody deride you for speaking up for what you believe. Sure, we have to be careful in picking our fights, but I promise to try my best to make this worth your while. I hope that you will continue to engage the conversation.

Later.

Again, Geezer,

Do you know Jeneba on a personal level? Were you in the room when the talks about the run-off occurred?

Clearly from what I read, you do not, and you were not. You have no idea what happened and if you knew Jeneba at all you would not be ignorantly slandering her name as you are.

You need to get a life and use your oh-so intelligent dialog for something you know what you are talking about.

Let's be honest. Tarmoh peaked at the perfect time, had the race of her life and felt she was the third qualifier.

EVERYBODY knew she couldn't duplicate that race and beat Felix in a runoff especially after Felix crushed that 200. It didn't help that everybody was pressuring her so they could make tons of money off the telecast at her expense. I hope Tarmoh comes back stronger and makes a team in the future.

Harry--

I won't go through a detailed examination of our posts.

Let me summarize, if I could: I was shocked by JT's actions; I felt for her and actually posted that people should stop harshing on her; by observing JT's subsequent actions, I decided that she probably wasn't a vulnerable individual, just a moron/idiot/fool/etc.; I labelled her, within the limits of the events surrounding the incident, a POS and a 'tard.

You took personal offense at my last action. You expressed moral outrage and indignation for what you perceive to have been unjust to both JT and perhaps other populations, and which you have therefore labelled inappropriate.

Let me say, first, that your judgment of my speech is made from your particular moral perspective, for which I have little to no regard. I don't care one bit if you are personally offended, and it doesn't bother me that you are.

What bothers me is that you seem to honestly believe that your arbitrary moral limits have some sort of an absolute foundation. I assure you, they most certainly do not, even if you believe that they derive from adherence to the tenets of a sacred text.

We look at events around us, combine them with our knowledge and experience, and make judgments about things. I have expressly limited my judgment of JT's character to track-related events during and following the trials episode. Do I know her personally? No. Do I need to in order to express an opinion so qualified? No.

Take a look at coach d's assessment of JT, which is that she is a "spoiled brat", based on track-related events during and following the trials episode. Does he know her personally? No. Does he need to in order to express an opinion so qualified? No.

Whether she is black or white, man or woman, rich or poor, privileged/underprivileged, theist/atheist, whatever, is irrelevant to any such qualified opinion.

I think she's a dolt, as she seems to have a resistance to understanding the reality of the situation. She asked the USATF officials, a week later, to explain WHY it was a dead heat when Jennings said that he would call her the winner 100 times out of 100. They declined to offer reasoning at that time, for reasons that should be obvious to anybody of nominal intelligence: Jennings' judgment was not dispositive of the issue, as it was he himself who protested his own decision; even Jennings didn't trust his own judgment sufficiently to unequivocally make the call.

Tarmoh doesn't evidence any understanding whatsoever of this basic fact, which makes her, as far as this sole aspect of her life goes, in my opinion, a dolt. I have used the word 'tard, because as a colloquialism, as you demand to have the term used, it most certainly does not refer only specifically to an individual who is significantly mentally challenged, it refers to "dolts", "morons", or "idiots". Regarding this issue, she is a 'tard, IMO.

All of JT's subsequent acts have been predicated upon that basic inability to understand. She was hurt, confused, disoriented, and frustrated at what she perceived to have been an injustice--but her perception is what is at fault. It is my opinion that she is either unable to understand the logic of the situation, or she is somehow not permitting herself to understand the logic of the situation. With the information that has come to light subsequent to that meeting, including the opportunity for a run-off, and JT's reactions thereto, I conclude that it is the latter--she is in denial of the reality of the situation. There is no way, in my judgment, that a person of normal intelligence could not understand the explanation of the call, with all the information that has come to light, not only about the event itself, but about USATF decision-making processes.

Does she knowingly, or unknowingly, deny the easily-understood reality? I don't know--if it is unknowing, then she is a 'tard but not necessarily a POS; if it is knowing, she is not necessarily a 'tard, but then most certainly a POS (or in coach d's parlance, a spoiled brat).

(Oh, and Harry, you might as well stop trying to frame the limits of the conversation according to literal meanings and definitions--not only would it be inconsistent with your expressed preference for the colloquial, but it's laughably pompous and desperate.)

Being a spoiled brat or a POS is, in my world, unequivocal evidence of a lower level of emotional development--that is, a retarded emotional development, relative to the norm. If I choose to label her a 'tard on this basis, in order for you to disagree substantively, you must argue that she does NOT exhibit a lower level of emotional development, and provide supporting evidence. Sitting on your moral high-horse and decrying my use of a particular label gets you nowhere.

For instance, OK, I will revise POS to "spoiled brat". Does that make you feel better? If so, why? Because of what YOU take "POS" to mean, rather than how I have specifically used it? The arrogance you display is in the elevation of your personal desires to a position of pre-eminence, in the face of directly contradictory evidence, hence judge, jury, and executioner, and ignoring evidence.

You must understand, as a matter of observable reality, that it is I who is the lexicographer of my own post, NOT YOU.

You seem like a thoughtful guy, which I respect. I also respect the fact that you were offended by my post, although I'm disappointed that the moral basis of your offense appears to conform very well with a canned "appropriate" morality, that is currently politically convenient in your society.

Fair enough, that type of conformist morality will allow you to achieve certain things within that society, but it will never allow you to look at that society from without in order to effect meaningful change thereupon. The trajectory is yours, I suspect from the depth of your comment that although you currently exhibit a fairly strident moral righteousness, that as you go through life and experience more things, cultures, and peoples, you will go through different phases of morality. Who knows how it will specifically pan out, but it is difficult to imagine that there will not be a time in your life where you will not be as doctrinaire with respect to your current morality as you currently are.

Harry, I'm nowhere near pushing the envelope. Come on, man, calling somebody out for calling somebody a 'tard and a POS? Seriously? There are more important things in life to worry about, things that are infinitely more severe. I suggest you direct your prodigious energies elsewhere, to a more profitable moral enterprise. Consider, for instance, the roots of your morality, from where your morality derives, and then consider the threats to those foundations--they are much more important in the long run than transitory, trifling offenses like this one, which may seem very important to you at this moment, but which, when put into perspective, is really very trivial.

There are serious moral fights to be had for anybody who has a relatively well-defined set of morals; for instance, if you are a fundamentalist Christian, you might want to take up the pro-life fight; or if you fancy yourself a Marxist, you might want to take up the redistributionist fight; and so on.

Taking a comment and, by ignoring parts of it and changing parts of it, re-framing it in a form to which you then take offense is beneath you, and you know it. And, if you remain offended by the comment, even after giving it fair treatment, ask yourself first why, and second, why I should care.

I'm interested in this last part--considering everything I have said, do you remain offended? If so, precisely WHY?

And finally, please explain why I should care enough about your being offended to either change the comment or make a retraction.

Sprintgeezer wrote:Being a spoiled brat or a POS is, in my world, unequivocal evidence of a lower level of emotional development--that is, a retarded emotional development, relative to the norm.

Not sure about Tarmoh, but this post is a pretty good indication that SG is a POS -- at least according to his own terminology.

Lots of pretty words and ginned up arguments to try to disguise an immature response? Pretending that this immature response is an effect of having a more sincere relation to reality?

SG: here's an easy way to handle the situation in the future. Just say, "I was wrong to have used derogatory language. It obviously distracted from my analysis. You're right about that, but wrong about Tarmoh."

Then make your argument. Easy enough.

OK, then how about this:

"[Relative to the moral sentiment expressed by particular letsrun posters,] I was wrong to have used derogatory language. [In this context] It obviously distracted from my analysis. You're right about that, but wrong about Tarmoh."

You see Harry? I'm willing to accept that the good doc has made a moral judgment, and recognizes it as such when he posts succinctly that "Not sure about Tarmoh, but this post is a pretty good indication that SG is a POS -- at least according to his own terminology."

Although I don't share his judgment, I do respect it, and am willing to meet him halfway.