Now PADI gets involved in agency bashing

[String]

Possibly a final update to this. It seems they do read email:

Thank you for your feedback regarding the PADI Website, and comments published there. After review of the content contained within your email, I have forwarded a request to our web services department to remove the aforementioned text from PADI.com.

 

[fisherdvm]

PADI is quite responsive to feedback. I sent them an email in the past concerning their weakened swim requirement. They emailed a letter back within 48 hours. Better than many businesses, my guess.

 

[micklock]

Watch your 'Thoughts,' they become words.

Watch your 'Words,' they become actions.

Watch your 'Actions,' they become habits.

Watch your 'Habits,' they become character.

Watch your 'Character,' for it becomes your Destiny.'

 

[bfw]

Anyone who knows me understands that I'm certainly not "high and mighty". Defending people who can't defend themselves has nothing to do with political correctness. Do you have some jokes about the terminally ill you care to share?

Many, some of them told to me by terminally ill people.
I'm a Catholic, and I've laughed at and retold every conceivable joke about Catholics.
Same for being an engineer, and having Irish, German, Scotch and English ancestry.
The most astoundingly over the top racial jokes I've ever heard were told to me by a black friend, and my girlfriend knows and laughs at every joke about women there is.
When I got up from a chair and as she was turning around and caught her elbow in the eye, and people asked the next day about my shiner, she said "he just doesn't listen."

Jokes resonate because they cast what everyone is already thinking in an ironic way.
9 times out of 10, I've found people being defended by PC busybodies didn't think they needed defending.

Lighten up, Francis.

 

[bfw]

I happen to know firsthand the effect a disabled person can have on one's life but this thread has pointed out one thing to me......why can't we have this same compassion for others on this board that we seem to have for someone disabled?

Obviously because most people feel those on the board are capable of sticking up for themselves, and if they aren't, it'll do them good to learn. Too few people are willing to accord the disabled the same dignity and opportunity for growth. That which does not kill you makes you stronger. Paternalism helps no one.

 

[bfw]

If you had a child who participated in the Special Olympics, you would be offended at such a remark.

Or not. Don't presume to project your own uptight hangups on everyone else.
I would not shelter such a child from the harshness of the real world, knowing that I am not immortal and might not be around to protect him forever.

 

[bfw]

PADI is quite responsive to feedback. I sent them an email in the past concerning their weakened swim requirement. They emailed a letter back within 48 hours. Better than many businesses, my guess.

Did they rescind the weakening of the swim requirement, or insult your intelligence with condescending pablum? Talk is cheap, email even cheaper.

 

[bfw]

Possibly a final update to this. It seems they do read email:

Eliot Spitzer did plenty of backpedaling when he got caught, too.

With an organization so fixated on marketing and public relations, nothing goes out to the public without being vetted and approved.

 

[bfw]

Well, I frankly find the "retard" comment pretty offensive.

Why? Don't parrot the party line, analyze your offense.
Did she pass moral judgment on the mentally disabled? No.
Did she say they were less than human? No.
Did she insult them personally? No.

She made an association that acknowledged that being mentally disabled is a sub-optimal status, one that no one desires to hold. Offense at this stems from not
wanting to acknowledge that reality, and guilt at being happy not to hold that status.
Guess what? It's not ideal; get over it. Until the day comes that people are lining up to consume mercury and lead, in order to attain that status, you're going to be stuck with the reality that it's sub-optimal.
Everyone is sub-optimal in some way - we're fat, or unattractive, or not geniuses, or clumsy, or wear glasses, or too short, or whatever. No one's perfect, and jokes about the less common imperfections simply reflect our regret at that, and a sense of consolation that our own imperfections aren't that bad. That awareness is never going away, and sometimes laughing at life's harshness makes it bearable.

 

[bfw]

Doesn't sound like you fault them for making a profit, just for making a profit without regard to any other consideration.

The former is the first step to the dark side of the latter. Slippery slope and all.