get off your asses and move

Usually I’m annoyed by the posters at Matthew Yglesias’s blog for their simpleminded parroting and cheerleading of whatever politically correct “liberal” or “progressive” position young Yglesias stakes out for them.

Yglesias has a tic. When he’s against something, he tends to prounounce it a “bad idea.” (Don’t believe me? do a Google search of “Yglesias” and “bad idea.”). Usually, the things he considers “bad ideas” are “bad” because they can’t be reconciled with a (politically correct) “liberal” worldview. Color me deeply unimpressed by this kind of circular ideological “reasoning” from an otherwise bright-seeming and knowledgeable Harvard graduate who is quoted admiringly all over the blogosphere.

So there’s that. But today I’m annoyed at the gang over there for dissing the Nintendo Wii because it requires—gasp!—physical exertion.

Yglesias writes:

there’s something odd about a video game system that’s actually physically strenuous. I got into some monster rallies playing Wii Tennis and I think I hurt my elbow.

One of his commenters responds:

the whole idea of a video game that involves full-body physical motion is just…unsettlingly “cyber” to me, like that factory in China where people have full-time jobs farming characters for online RPGs, or the very existence of Google Earth.

I want all this disturbing William Gibson stuff to go away. Bring on the global warming and the peak oil! Luddites, arise!

Fer chrissakes! Nintendo created a device for getting that gets young Americans off their asses to do some physical activity. What the hell is wrong with that in a nation of obese children?