N.F.L.'s New Bottom (and Waist) Line. Is it fair or even necessary for the N.F.L. to fire a highly respected game official because it considers him overweight? By Mike Freeman. [Headlines From The NY Times]

In July 2002, one of the NFL's best game officials was fired for not meeting a new weight guideline that they had established.  He sued, and got his job back, but now is considered suspended, rather than fired, until he gets his weight in line with the new guideines.

There are, of course, debates about why the new guidelines were instituted.  Some NFL professionals have said (anonymously) that it's because they want the game officials to look better on TV.  Others (un-anonymously) have said that they simply don't want an unhealthy official to collapse on the field due to exertion - the game officials do have to run up and down the field a lot - especially in the higher heat of some of the early games.

Yet, despite the general belief that "fat" automatically means "unhealthy", that isn't always the case.  It's entirely possible for an obese person to still have normal blood pressure, normal heart and respiratory rates, low cholesterol, normal pulse and blood oxygen rates and normal blood sugar.  And these statistics are much more useful in determining the overall health of a person, as opposed to just their weight or "Body Mass Index".

If the NFL is truly worried about the health and well-being of its game officials, then perhaps it should require them to take tests that would provide the above data and use that to determine if they are healthy enough to officiate, rather than just basing a determination off their weight.  This would not only be less discriminatory against healty-but-fat people, it would be more accurate and, thus, more likely to weed out any men who might be at risk for collapsing on the field.

If, however, their actual concern is with appearance, then the NFL should be highly ashamed of itself.  I doubt very many people - male or female - are going to decide whether or not to watch a game based on the perceived attractiveness of the game officials.

We've known already for several years that the constant focus of the entertainment (and other) media on slim women, showing them as being desirable and fat women as being people to laugh at, make jokes about or pity, has been linked to the increase in anorexia and bulimia among adolesent girls.  More recent trends have shown that as men have come under greater scruitiny in the media, with more attention being paid to thinner men than fat ones, adolesent males have also shown an increase in eating disorders - a phenomenon that was relatively rare just a few years ago.

Worrying about the attractiveness of football game officials will do little, if anything, to enhance the viewers experience, and its unlikely to do much to draw in more viewers.  Most people don't really notice the officials, until they throw a flag on a play where the team an individual is rooting for is judged to have made some kind of an error.  The knowledge, however, that even football officials are only acceptable if they are thin, is likely to stick with some of the boys who read or hear about it - which also means that it might contribute to some of the boys developing eating disorders at some point.  Please note, I'm not saying that this one decision by itself would be enough to push someone over the "edge" of being anorexic or bulimic, but as part of an overall pattern of saying that only thin is acceptable, it has the potential to be a contributing factor.  And that's just not something that's needed.

On 11/10 and 11/11, I posted two articles that talked about how the government has been handling the case of John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo, the accused DC-area snipers.  In both articles, I noted that Malvo had been interrogated prior to his having had either a lawyer or a guardian appointed to help him.  According to today's New York Times editorial, this is incorrect.  Malvo had been appointed a guardian prior to the interrogation.  During the 7 hours Malvo was being interrogated, however, his guardian asked that the questioning be stopped (as is a guardian's right to do).  His request was denied and he was told to leave the police headquarters.

The government's disregard for Mr. Malvo's juvenile status was dramatically illustrated last week, when police interrogated him for seven hours outside the presence of his court-appointed guardian. Todd Petit, the lawyer appointed to serve as a stand-in for Mr. Malvo's parents, asked the police to stop, but they continued, and ordered Mr. Petit to leave police headquarters. It makes a mockery of the institution of guardianship for the government to appoint a guardian and then prevent him from being present for an interrogation that could lead to his ward's execution. - New York Times editorial, 11/12/2002

Suspect Tells Police That Target of Bali Bombing Was Americans, Not Australians

By JANE PERLEZ

KUTA, Indonesia, Nov. 8 — A suspect in the terrorist attack on a Bali disco told his interrogators that the group that carried out the blast intended to attack Americans and regretted that instead they killed many more Australians, the head of the investigation said today.   [...]

[...]   According to the account of Gen. I Made Mangku Pastika, the chief Indonesian investigator, Mr. Amrozi told his interrogators: "They wanted to kill as many Americans as possible. They hate Americans. They tried to find where the Americans are gathering."

They believed that Bali was a haunt of Americans, and afterward were "not happy because Australians were killed in big numbers," General Pastika said. The attackers sought revenge for "what Americans have done to Muslims," General Pastika said.

How bad does your intelligence have to be in order to think that a tourist hotspot for Australians is actually a tourist hotspot for Americans? 

Somehow, I find it a bit difficult to believe that this was an honest mistake.  Anyone who would go to the trouble of bowing up a night club in Bali and setting a second bomb to try to kill those who escaped from the first bomb as they ran from the club and to try to kill the rescue workers who reported to the first blast, would also be capable of determining who was likely to be at the target location and if they were the people they really wanted to kill or not.  The question, therefore, becomes, why would someone bomb and kill Austrailians and then try to claim they intended to kil Americans?  One reason may be that they want to create tension between America and our allies, by giving them reasons to resent us and our treatment of Muslims.

Even while working towards the now-passed UN resolution, the US has made it clear that if we think it's necessary (and it seems unlikely that we won't), we will invade Iraq, regardless of what the UN decides.  I suspect that most of the Middle Eastern and Muslim eaders have realized it is inevitable that the US will invade, and that trying to stop us is a wasted effort. International support for our efforts, how ever, have remained shaky, and that makes it an area that those opposed to our goals can attack.  The fewer allies we have who will join us in the war, the weaker they think our resove will be.  And I can't say I blame them - once the reality that our kids - our young men and women - are dying in a war that makes no sense, its very likely that public support for the war itself will collapse, and the Bush administration will have to decide how much further to push, and balance what future their personal careers may have against the outrage of the public and against whatever their true goals for the attacks are.