The Dating Game
We support this or that person for various reasons, but truthfully the selection is too often not objective. Two people date and marry for reasons that are personal, not objective. Because each 'love' affair is personal, others cannot judge the union.
Some marriages are based mostly on respect, or 'love' (hard to define this), or money, or power, or sex, or prestige, or just companionship. I guess what works, works. Marriage is a legal fact, not any kind of singular description of reality.
There is no judicial system or religious system (outside of gay marriage) which passes any judgment on whether the basis for the marriage is valid. You book the church, you go to a judge---whatever---and the marriage is law. This is the dating game with the rules set by the participants. Fair enough, it is purely personal.
But the dating game extends far beyond marriage. Barack Obama, with the same policies and a different personality, would be a loser at the polls. We 'like' certain athletes because of the 'dating game' mentality. Fair enough except an awful lot of energy then is expended to translate 'like' into why the athlete is better than others, which of course, is needed to seal your case. Stats can often get in the way of our likes and dislikes based on the dating game mentality, so we invent adjectives which present our choice in more favorable terms. Bush, we are told by his supporters, was a good President despite the stats, because he was 'principled', 'tough', didn't yield to public opinion, was a born again Christian willing to push his 'revealed' religious beliefs to become the law of the land, and stood his ground once his foot came down, etc. It's the dating game, that's what it is. Sports is probably the worst area for the dating game. We like who we like because we know what we like and like to like what we like. Again fair enough, but this then gets translated illogically into performance judgments.
Clearly, at least to me, politics should be about policy. If George Bush still had all the personal qualities which I dislike and supported the right policies, his responsibility as a politician would be met. An athlete who trains properly, performs well on the field, and is a good citizen has met all the obligations necessary to be valuable on the team. Kobe Bryant might be the most obnoxious person in the world to some, but he is valuable to any team because he trains right, he performs well on the court and may or may not be a good citizen. Two out of three. The point here is that all of us have a right to like or not like someone, but we need recognize that like has little to do with worth on a team. The dating game is irrelevant in sports and politics. Well, not entirely. Politicians have to get elected so the dating game becomes a prerequisite---sometimes. Some of our greatest Presidents got to become Presidents despite inherent weaknesses in the dating game. Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln, FDR, Truman, and others got into the White House without excelling at the dating game.
After a Presidential debate (if I can use the term debate loosely), watching those assembled 'undecideds' critique the debate is a sorry affair. It is the dating game, absent policy issues. "I thought so and so was more poised----etc." just as if they were choosing someone to date. I think in sports it is ok, after all these are games, and I too, often like someone in sports for reasons other than just their performance. But I try not to be suckered into the dating game nonsense by claiming they are better than their stats because of Illusionary ephemeral qualities that are claimed to help their teammates play better. These are professional players and know exactly what they need to do in the playing arena to make the team successful. That often is just about all they seem to know. After that they often seem to have the brain of a turtle. These dating game fans may create illusionary factors but the coaches and owners know better. If your stats are there, you stay and maybe get a raise. If the stats are not there you are gone. If the often bastard owners or general managers know anything, they know the bottom line. If team chemistry, with rare exceptions, was much of a factor, you wouldn't find massive migration of players from team to team. Terrell Owens is a good case in point. Those who hate Terrell Owens have for years been claiming he is a poison pill, disruptive to the point of incapacitating the performance of others on the team----popular sport commentators have insisted he be banned from the sport and on and on it goes. He is 36 years old, in 2nd place in general stats for wide receivers in the NFL record book, every team he has been on has had a winning record, every team he has left has done worse after he left, and he remains one of the top paid receivers in football. So from the record, on what basis is he a poison pill let alone be banned from the sport? Banned for what? Asking to be paid for his level of performance? Demanding the ball be thrown to him a lot? Not letting others interfere with his own conditioning and training program? Expressing his own opinion about a position he knows better than most anyone in football and has the stats to prove it? No, it all boils down to the dating game. His focus on himself, regardless of the results he gets from it, annoys the hell out of some people, angers them to the point of rage, and if his team doesn't win the Super Bowl the solution, to them, is to get rid of Terrell Owens. It is hard to remember the last season Owens has not gotten at least 1000 yards and been in the top five in number of touchdowns, regardless of the quarterback. Strange, but there are a lot of great football players who have never won a Superbowl ring---the Hall of Fame is cluttered with them. There are 32 teams in the league. One person, if not a quarterback, cannot, by themselves put any team in the Superbowl. Even Donovan couldn't do it without T.O. With T.O. he did.
Thus, the dating game, outside of romance, is bad way to select the best politicians, the best athletes, the best administrators, etc. Results matter. They really do. NEVERTHELESS, all of us are entitled to like who we like. I think I excel here and have no prejudices. I hate everyone. That levels the playing field and is the ultimate in fairness.
