"Fat Goalie Fallacy" and "Hockey Luvin' Homos" export hockey to the political pages

Pretty much the last place I expect to find hockey content is Andrew Sullivan's political blog The Daily Dish. Nevertheless, Google Reader delivered not one, not two, but three hockey posts.

"Hockey Luvin Homos" - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

[A reader writes:] Check out this clip from the game last night, where the announcer discusses a couple of additions to the team this year that, uh, brought them over the hump. The dialog near the 30 second mark is too perfect.

Follow the link for the video. It's from last night's Kings game. It's not exactly clear from this one post, but Andrew Sullivan is a gay, conservative political writer, and his readers frequently send in funny gay-themed content from all corners of the web. In the next two posts (well, in the first one at least), Sullivan cites the op-ed piece in question as an example of how pervasive and/or accepted fat jokes are. 

Could An Obese Goalie Change Hockey? - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Todd Gallagher says yes:

As strange as it may sound to anyone with a sense of decency, there is actually sound reasoning behind it. Because of the geometry of the game, the potential for one mammoth individual to change hockey is staggering. [...] Fill [the] net completely, and no goals can possibly be scored against your team. So why hasn't it happened yet? One answer is that professionalism and fair play prevent many sports teams from doing whatever it takes to win. This is also known as "having no imagination." Additionally, in hockey the worry of on-ice reprisal from bloodthirsty goons would weigh heavily on the mind of any player whose very existence violated the game's "unwritten rules."

What follows is an essay that proves one thing: mocking the obese in print is so accepted in society that the Wall Street Journal will print an entire article that relies on doing so throughout for a punchline.

And the follow up, in which readers write in:

Could An Obese Goalie Change Hockey? Ctd - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

A puckhead writes: [...]

"All organized leagues follow NHL size guidelines for pads, gloves, chest/arm protectors, pants, etc., and I can tell you that a human being who stands 6'+ tall and is 4'+ wide would never be able to physically fit into regulation equipment. And even if he/she could cram themselves into the gear, I'm sure there would be an immense amount of exposed skin where the poor bastard wouldn't even want to lay there on the ice getting peppered. [...]

Another writes:

"The 'fat goalie fallacy' is something familiar to most fans of hockey. It's the kind of stupid question that gets asked by those completely ignorant of the sport. Why is it so dumb? Because playing in goal is Hard Work. A fat slob of a goalie may block more of the net, but they would still need to have the athletic reflexes to catch 100-mile-an-hour slapshots, the strength to drop down [...] and bounce back up again [...], the skating ability to go side to side [...], and the endurance to play for a full 60 minutes [...]

 

Because as kids we were not yet sensitive to the feelings of others -- and possibly because we did not realize how fat we ourselves might one day become -- we from time to time would theorize on the viability of the super-fat goalie question. Even at age seven or eight, we concluded that even someone as fat as Mr. Creosote would not be able to fill the entire goal hermetically, and even if such a person were found, the result would be death from internal injuries.