We just got news that legendary MTB mechanic and all-around character, Chris Monk Dawg Vasquez passed away. We don't have details right now, but take some time to remember one of mountain biking's greatest family members. You will be missed. Our thoughts go out to his family and every MTBer he impacted in his life.
17 Questions with Monk Dawg
http://www.vitalmtb.com/photos/features/2012-UCI-World-Cup-Val-di-Sole-…
http://www.vitalmtb.com/photos/features/2012-UCI-World-Cup-Fort-WIlliam…
This "tribute" is disturbing on several levels:
1. You focused on (and applauded) yourself.
• A tribute should not be about you or what you've done for the deceased during his or her lifetime.
• The readers aren't interested in where you were as a "novice team owner” when you hired him, or any implication that you were taking a risk on him.
• The fact that you are a dog lover means nothing to an audience that wants to read about him.
o It doesn't mean you can understand his loss better than a non-dog-lover.
o Empathy is actually not having had the experience, but still understanding it.
o Regardless, you don't need to understand anyone else's loss for it to be real for them. Not all experiences need to resonate with you.
• Later in this response, I will touch on your role as his fat-shaming employer, but I'd like to include in this list how proud of yourself you are for trying to save him.
• This is not about you, and these facts don't help paint a better picture of what your relationship with him was like as a friend - something that actually would have been of value here in a tribute.
• There are touching moments that could have really shined in this writing. For instance, the anecdote about the letter you received from the tour guide about Monk’s personality was lovely. Unfortunately, it was overshadowed by your humble-brag that you gifted that safari experience to him. Aren't you just great!
2. You altered the perception of a man's personality who cannot prove otherwise.
• Next: Let's get to your armchair psychoanalyzing of your friend. It's inappropriate to attribute his weight or diet of unhealthy foods to any particular event in his life. Because you do not actually know that it had anything to do with his weight. Even if he said so. We live in a culture obsessed with fatness as the worst version of yourself, one that isn't the "real" you. A lot of people are genetically and/or hormonally predisposed to heaviness, and wrestle their entire lives with the fact that being fat is their "fault" or that it must be due to some event or trauma. That's a false construction, that sets people up to shame themselves.
• To say he had "demons" in an online post is to represent him to the world as someone misunderstood and disconnected. It is to summarize every second of a life as if he was in this dark place unfamiliar to most who knew him. It degrades the essence of who he was. It is something that his family and friends may not appreciate, nor is it necessarily accurate as you do not hold any degree in psychology, psychiatry, or counseling. Unless you count having watched Intervention or My-600-lb Life or The Biggest Loser of course. It seems like you're intent on belittling your deceased employee.
3. You're misguided about several points you make about diet and obesity.
• Obesity and unhealthy foods (as well as unhealthy eating practices) are prevalent in parts of the world other than the West. Some, yes, are a result of Western influence, and other are due to different cultural practices. Let me educate you on a few:
o Nauru: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Nauru
o The practice of Gavage in Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leblouh
o China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_China
o Don't forget Samoa, where obesity is strictly biological: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/thrifty-gene-mutation-that-boosts-fast-storage…
• Binge eating is a psychological disorder that you cannot diagnose. It's not simply "eating a lot."
• It is unfair to classify food as an "addiction" because unlike other addictions (like drugs or alcohol), we must eat as humans (whereas we don’t need to drink or get high). We are also biologically programmed to desire salty, sugary, and fatty food in ways that the world's top psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and endocrinologists do not fully understand. Did you know, for instance, that patients can exit gastric bypass and no longer have diabetes? Really. Without losing a single pound, and just by entering surgery, patients are being cured of type 2 diabetes in the same day. Here's a link: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6144/406
• Your assumptions about the human body are reductive and trite. Using your friend's human body as a cautionary tale in his memoriam is truly vile as well as inaccurate.
4. Your Morals Should Be Questioned by all who know you.
• You sound like a very judgmental "friend." I wouldn't want to be friends with anyone who would post anything this disrespectful about me after my death.
• You are fixated, even after his death, on another person's weight.
• What you did is a just like attending a funeral and saying, "What? She had cancer! And I graciously, frequently, even at my own financial expense, tried to tell her to put on sunscreen! What a pity, but she was sick in the head!" You wouldn't do that, and you shouldn't when it comes to weight.
• Anyone in AA or any other program (including over-eater's anonymous) will tell you labeling someone else as an addict in life is useless unless that person wants to change. What is your end game by labeling him an addict in death unless you're just a fat-shaming, hateful asshole?
• Your last two paragraphs moved you from self-absorbed blowhard who thinks a lot of himself to a vicious, controlling employer. Don't worry, you're legally protected because you claim that his health problems were putting riders at risk, but on a moral and ethical level, you fat-shamed and health-shamed an employee to the point of embarrassment.
o You publicly punished a man by excluding him from a trip because he wasn’t adhering to your regimen to alter his own body!
• You have control issues. You refuse to acknowledge that he had a right to eat whatever, whenever he wanted and that you aren't a saint for trying to force him to live more like you do.
• Butting into the medical choices of your employees is not acceptable.
• You say you're upset and frustrated he wouldn't take your help. You have quite the complex. Shouldn't you just be upset your friend isn't alive anymore? Why is this still about you?
• Here are a few links about discrimination:
o http://www.cswd.org/docs/faq.html
o https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sizeism (You're lucky sizeism isn't considered an actionable, discriminatory offense as an employer).
o http://www.obesityaction.org/educational-resources/resource-articles-2/…
The good news.
I could be petty and hope anyone who ever sees you eat an Oreo again thinks of you as a hypocrite. Instead, I’ll wish for your sake that after having written this public hatchet piece about your “friend” that you never gain weight or pass away one day from one of those fatty syndromes like a heart attack and suffer the embarrassment you bestowed upon another for his body. Lastly, I hope you work through your obvious issues.
To that end, I'm here to offer you help in the form of this book which details what it's like to live as a fat person in the United States. Now, it is written by a woman, and it does contain some powerful feminism, but seems like you could use a dose of anyone else's reality: https://www.amazon.com/Shrill-Notes-Woman-Lindy-West/dp/0316348406
I'll even purchase it for you if you'd like.
Really?
He also wrote a long ass post psycho analyzing every detail. Dude is trolling.
Post a reply to: Rest in Peace Monk Dawg