Watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve has become a tradition for many Americans, though we cannot state with certainty why we still tune in. Perhaps out of tradition – and age – or both.
While watching the NBC crew kill time before everyone awkwardly – and poorly – counted down the last 10 seconds of the year (again), I found myself only casually listening to the conversation between Carson Daly and his co-hosts.
There was talk of Twitter gaffes and resolutions that are never kept. And in the next breath, I caught the mention of how they hoped 2014 would be a better year for us as a nation, how we could start accepting more, make better decisions and stop judging so much that we don’t enjoy life.
Not a great resolution if we just established we don’t keep them.
At that same moment, scrolling through Twitter, I came across a re-tweet that seemed like something off a grocery store checkout lane trash headline: Aaron Rodgers reportedly gay.
Sigh.
I read the story, and just as I suspected, it appeared to be written by someone who was 15 and thought “Burn Books” were a super idea. But it was filled with all sorts of supposed “facts” (read: rumors, gossip, heresy), so I sent a quick text to one of my best friends.
He had not heard this rumor either, but said it would not surprise him, yet nor would be care. After a little digging, we discovered that Rodgers had earlier that day felt it necessary to respond to said rumors on local Milwaukee radio that he “really, really likes women.”
Um, OK.
But there are so many layers here, that I wonder if this sort of resolution of acceptance has more to do with how we think and how we react than to how we feel?
What if Rodgers was gay? Would it matter? Obviously, it would not really, truly matter. But the reaction would from the standpoint that perceptions would be changed – from within his locker room, to the NFL, to the Wisconsin community. The sports world would be changed to have a league-MVP; Super Bowl MVP and Top 5 player announce to the world what his private life is.
And I can’t help but wonder, why? To what point and for what purpose? Whose business is it? And if it somehow changes your opinion of him, that is your issue.
There seems to be an ongoing search to out someone high up in professional sports, to the point we have athletes emphatically answering they do not have a closet to emerge from, which then makes them look bad – as if they have to put the Seinfeld “not that there’s anything wrong with that” reference tag at the end, just so the quote does not come across wrong.
Yet I wonder, what are we searching for? And why? What point are we trying to prove? What if gay athletes are not coming out simply because they just do not want to make their private life public? Is not enough of their life public and scrutinized as it is?
I cannot help but feel this process is a rushed exercise to make our society feel better, or to demand acceptance, or to prove that acceptance is not possible all in the name of winning some publicity battle over political correctness.
Because let us be brutally honest for a moment. We are the ultimate jury. We constantly judge people all of the time. We judge based on religion, race, line of employment, physical appearance, where we live, what we eat, what phones we use, our political ideologies, sports teams, shoes – and on and on.
We say we want to accept people for who they are, but we only do that if our perception of who they are actually matches, you know, who they are. So we judge on that, as well.
So, we are fine with Peyton Manning throwing 55 touchdowns and breaking all kinds of single season passing records, even though there’s a fair amount of evidence to suggest the Broncos ran up the score on their opponents. You know, the very same thing we shredded Tom Brady and the Patriots for in 2007, when he set the mark at 50 TDs.
The difference is simple in our minds: Brady was a bad guy, who played for a publicly despised coach, coming off Spygate and winners of three Super Bowls in the previous five years. Brady broke up with an actress he was having a child with and married a supermodel. He is a spokesman for Uggs. Manning is a spokesman for Cadillac and having football on your phone, married his college girlfriend and keeps his twins out of the media.
Our perception dictates our reaction and our acceptance of someone. Peyton Manning comes off as awe-shucks; a hard-working guy who is obsessed with football. Brady comes off as too cool for school, a little silver spoon-ish and seems to have other interests outside of the game, like posing for fashion magazines. This bothers us for a variety of totally personal, perception-based reasons.
Yet we choose to forget that Manning grew up the son of a college legend and NFL star, whose dad made the top salary in the league at one time and is actually much closer to the silver spoon moniker than Brady. We ignore the pedigree, No. 1 pick status of Manning and seem to constantly forget (despite media reminders) that Brady was seventh on the depth chart at Michigan when he arrived and split time with Drew Henson and was drafted in the 6th Round, with the body of a 14-year-old.
Yet we still don’t like it. We consistently form our collective narrative on famous people based off a very finite amount of information – and then make wild, grandiose assumptions.
We want all our stars obsessed with their respective sport, watching film 25 hours a day, saying all the right things and keeping out of trouble. And then, when they do, we say they have no personality. It’s why Manning’s turn on SNL a few years ago was so shocking – who knew Mr. Quarterback could be so funny? Who knew he had – gasp – a personality and comedic timing?
The American culture is heavily dictated by assumptions of what we already think we know, which in turn, kind of jumps into what we will inwardly and outwardly accept. People are shocked when they learn something that they don’t believe fits the profile of what they perceive.
For instance, would it not seem strange to the majority of us to learn that Johnny Manziel loves fine art? What about if we learn that Tony Romo was a huge Grateful Dead fan, and lived in a Bohemian style apartment and just keep money in the bank? What if we learned that LeBron James read Shakespeare and listened to Mozart before every game? Or Jay Cutler helped the elderly into their seats three hours before game time?
These things do not seem to jive with what we have already placed inside the box of what we expect based on a stereotype that fits a commonly held assumption.
Do these things matter? No. But you have to be careful with your brand now. More often than not, it would befit us to keep up the visual and verbal presentation of what is expected instead of what actually is. It is just easier for everyone involved. Some of us go on pretending, others go on assuming.
Almost like some sort of accepted game of charades.
This is why we have still got quite a bit of work to do before we actually make the strides we’re aiming for in our society.
Actions speak louder than words, as they say. So it really does not matter if Aaron Rodgers is gay or not – only our reaction to whether or not we even assume it is plausible.
Either way, that collective reaction says more about us than it does about him or anyone else. Perhaps we could cut down on the assumptions we make about others.
That would be a resolution worth keeping.
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