{"id":3917,"date":"2010-02-23T00:30:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T08:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=3917"},"modified":"2010-02-21T21:52:07","modified_gmt":"2010-02-22T05:52:07","slug":"the-air-force-academy-and-air-guitars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/23\/the-air-force-academy-and-air-guitars\/","title":{"rendered":"The Air Force Academy and Air Guitars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of people don&#8217;t realize that some of the military academies&#8217; displays of &#8220;spirit&#8221;\u00a0aren&#8217;t entirely spontaneous or voluntary.\u00a0 While many enjoy going to their college&#8217;s football games, for example, the military academies are probably among the few institutions that <em>require<\/em> their student body to attend such games (and in uniform).\u00a0 Even the pushups that follow a touchdown in a service academy game are technically required (of the freshman class).<\/p>\n<p>(When military members are essentially forced to participate in what seems to be a voluntary event, they refer to it as being\u00a0&#8220;volun-told.&#8221;)\u00a0 Such displays are <!--more-->just one expression of what some in the military call &#8220;mandatory fun.&#8221;\u00a0 An otherwise &#8220;fun&#8221; event has much of the &#8220;fun&#8221; drained out of it by mandatory attendance and mandatory participation.<\/p>\n<p>When things hit the news, then, of the US Air Force Academy attempting to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazette.com\/entertainment\/air-94261-world-force.html\">break the &#8220;air guitar world record&#8221;<\/a> with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2010\/02\/airforce_flightlines_airguitar_021610w\/\">attendees at a basketball game<\/a>, you almost feel sorry for the cadets who will be at that game.\u00a0 It was for a good cause, as it turns out, but still a little hokey nonetheless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of people don&#8217;t realize that some of the military academies&#8217; displays of &#8220;spirit&#8221;\u00a0aren&#8217;t entirely spontaneous or voluntary.\u00a0 While many enjoy going to their college&#8217;s football games, for example, the military academies are probably among the few institutions that require their student body to attend such games (and in uniform).\u00a0 Even the pushups that follow a touchdown in a [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2,40,65],"class_list":["post-3917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-academies","tag-military","tag-tradition","tag-usafa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}