Wednesday 19 October 2011

Nanny In The Dugout

The US is battling an eye-watering budget deficit, fighting dodgy wars all over the world, and having to bail out some of their major industries. So how are Democrat Senators wisely using their time in office?

WASHINGTON--The day before game one of the World Series, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and other senators are asking Major League Baseball to ban players from using tobacco products at games, especially smokeless or chewing tobacco.

"Tomorrow night, an expected 15 million viewers, including many children, will tune in to watch the first game of the series. Unfortunately, as these young fans root for their favorite team and players, they also will watch their on-field heroes use smokeless tobacco products," wrote Durbin and other senators to MLB executive director Michael Weiner.

"During the upcoming negotiations over the bargaining agreement, we write to ask that the Major League Baseball Players Association agree to a prohibition on the use of all tobacco products at games and on camera at all Major League ballparks. This would send a strong message to young baseball fans, who look toward the players as role models, that tobacco use is not essential to the sport of baseball."
Because young fans see a baseball player chewing and immediately spot that it's tobacco and not a stick of Wrigleys. In fact, best just ban chewing altogether to be safe, don't want anyone getting confused, eh? It's for the chiiildren, after all.

The lengths bansturbators will go to pretend one person's behaviour affects others - in order to implement control freakery in their pet area - is sometimes staggering.

Even highly-paid sports stars (and a tradition in the 'land of the free') can't escape the all-encompassing tentacles of professional socialist finger-waggers. Plain evil, so they are.


10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Baseball ??
Methinks we mean "ROUNDERS" beloved
pursuit of flopsy tartlettes in
soiled nickers and sweaty white blouses panting round posh parks.
The thought of full grown men
indulging in such pansy like silliness brings one out in a pink flush.
Hardly surprising the Afghan wackos are having a turkey shoot
with the NATO Gender bending
forces.


Dog Soldier

Ian Thorpe said...

Didn't California SuperNanny have a go at banning chewing in restaurants a few months ago?

Dick Puddlecote said...

Anon: Spitefully funny, as usual. ;)

Ian: I wouldn't be surprised, I'll ask my CA expert.

Anonymous said...

Living in Northern California, I've not heard anything recently about a state-wide ban on chewing tobacco - but I do know that both RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris are in competition here and in other parts of Northern California placing ads for their own brands of snus under the Camel, Kool and Marlboro labels and selling it at an extreme discount to what cigarettes are selling for. So it would appear that tobacco companies, either on their own or with state government insistence, might be trying to switch consumers over to snus, which is a form of chewing tobacco - or it could simply be tobacco companies trying to still market and get around the smoking bans - which are outdoor areas in many CA cities now, including San Francisco, which is a $500 fine and is showing up in smaller San Franciso suburban areas, Concord to the east of here just the most recent example.

Outdoor bans in Northern California are common though. Davis eight miles west of Sacramento has had a city-wide outdoor smoking ban for many years and a $50 penalty in place for that violation.

To keep abreast on what the state of CA is doing though, here is the state government (taxpayer) funded website - this organization must have millions to burn through (even though the state is near bankruptcy) since they produce a constant stream of anti-smoking advertisements and sprinkle them liberally over all TV broadcast channels throughout the state.

You can see examples of what they do and read the latest in CA Tobacco Control goings on at their website.

http://www.tobaccofreeca.com/

Frankly, it disgusts me that the state is near bankruptcy yet funding for a hate campaign against smokers has been increasing over the last 15 years - which almost coincides with the years of CA going down the tubes financially - strange correlation that turns out to be too - smoking ban brought in 15 years ago and economy going down the tubes.

Down in Southern California, I have even seen state-paid funding sponsoring huge billboard ads out in the middle of nowhere, including deserts, extolling the virtues of anti-smoking and nannying people to stop smoking in their own cars - in the middle of nowhere these types of state-paid billboards show up.

If CA did recently ban tobacco chewing, then I would not be surprised - but I have not personally heard of it (yet).

Anonymous said...

The literally self-righteous and pompous judgementally pure Pharisees in the Temple have also come out in favour of banning all tobacco use in major league baseball, as per Baptist and other religious leaders recommending the same major-league ban.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/religious-leaders-to-mlb-ban-chewing-tobacco

So these senators will have "God on their side" apparently - as the judgemental religious Pharisees of our age have also jumped on the anti-smoking bandwagon.

Last time, prohibition came as a result of the Pharisees. This time the Pharisees came on board after the non-religious fake-science people pushed anti-smoking first, in the opposite way around it seems.

Either way, the politicians and the self-appointed "religious" people are now in cahoots with supporting one another in their nefarious attempts at controlling over people's "sinful" behaviours.

P T Barnum said...

The senator is from Illinois, as are the St Louis Cardinals, who are in the World Series (against Texas). The Cards are sponsored by, amongst others, a government campaign to ban chewing tobacco, so this move is entirely directed against the Texas Rangers who, to my knowledge, do not chew tobacco in the dug-out, although they get through a lot of sunflower seeds.

And anyone who thinks baseball is a girly game is only showing their own ignorance.

Anonymous said...

America is so quick to ram all
sorts of crap like their sports,bans
and sub culture down our European throats,its a pity they were'nt a bit quicker turning up in WW1 and WW2 ie 1917 and 1941.
However they turned up in Nam on
time,say no more.
Anyway,ignorance of Baseball is
hardly a misgiving ,more of a blessing
AS for StalagLuftCalifornia with a bit of luck Big Andy(San Andreas Fault) will heave that sunny
Gulag into the big blue soon


High Noon

Leg-iron said...

If people believe their children will be so easily influenced by adult attitudes and behaviour, then they have a hell of a lot more to worry about than smoking.

Certain adults are likely to convince them of all sorts of terrible things.

I wonder if I should take up teaching?

Anonymous said...

Well hurray - hurray!

The World Series is on TV - I just looked.

Lo and behold - the cameras were doing a repetitive close-up of someone chewing like made - jaw and tongue forward - jaw and tongue back - grinding that unmentionable deep into his mouth.

Then another - another close-up - the camera keeps going up close - someone also chewing - running those jaws up and down - making a big show of it.

So they might be chewing gum. They might be chewing Nicorettes [(c) Johnson&Johnson].

Or. They might be. Chewing.

That unmentionable!

Lovely. I hope the players make a spectacle out of it - on purpose.

smokervoter said...

You'll find tobaccofreeca listed under the Bureau of High-Horsemanship, a division of the California Department of Public Hatred. They are the lowest of the low. They ran an ad which implied that one secondary wisp of tobacco smoke was deadlier than the bite of a black mamba snake. They should be prosecuted for hate crimes against humanity.

Over time I've involuntarily contributed over $2000 to these rat bastards. Here's hoping the San Andreas Fault runs right smack dab through their headquarters.