Aaron Rodgers, acceptance, New Year's Eve, Peyton Manning, Society, tolerance, Tom Brady

Accepted Assumptions

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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American culture, Duck Dynasty, GLAAD, NAACP, Phil Robertson, Philosophy, Society

Hide Your Crazy

Hide your crazy.
Who knew Miranda Lambert would provide the ultimate voice of reason? She has a song that include the following lyrics:
“My mama came from a softer generation
Where you get a grip and bite your lip just to save a little face
Go and fix your makeup, girl, it’s just a break up
Run and hide your crazy and start actin’ like a lady
‘Cause I raised you better, gotta keep it together
Even when you fall apart”
Now, who knows if Lambert is endorsing her Mama’s viewpoint or that of the current climate that fully supports broadcasting your news for the world to see? She certainly throws out some backhanded compliments about a softer generation and a saving a little face.
But the point remains: we’re not acting like most of us were raised. And we don’t hide things very well.
It is increasingly difficult to open up Facebook or Twitter without seeing someone, anyone and everyone sharing more than you might expect. It comes from celebrities and old friends from high school. Someone’s cheating on someone, someone’s pissed off about something that was said.
We are intolerant of tolerance. In fact, we seem to be struggling, in this modern, social media, culturally, ethically and morally divided era with the application of the word “tolerance” and the right of Freedom of Speech.
Look, for thousands of years people have been different. Different races, creeds, religions. What does it matter, truly? Why do I care if all of my friends and family hold the same belief on God, gays, lesbians, horticulture, the color purple or health insurance?
Why are we so obsessed with everyone agreeing with us? We never seemed to care before.
Perhaps it is due to the world becoming one massive popularity contest. Between reality TV (which is anything but realistic) and the number of likes, followers and retweets – it’s our straw poll of how well we are liked, admired or listened to.
And apparently we all need to be heard.
At least until no one wants to listen. Or until they hear something that offends them so deeply to their core that they just have to point out – with intolerance – how incorrect you are. The simple fact is we often exercise our Freedom of Speech in order to tell someone else what they can’t say.
It is an absurd notion that most likely most will disagree with, yet fully practice themselves.
Case in point: Phil Robertson, the patriarch of the Robertson family showcased on A&E’s hit show “Duck Dynasty”, was put on hiatus for his comments to GQ regarding gays and lesbian lifestyle. There is question now to whether he will return, whether the family will do the show without him and whether advertisers will still support said show if he returns.
GLAAD and the NAACP immediately condemned the remarks – which were Robertson’s personal opinions based off a question in an interview.
This is where it gets murky. Does Robertson represent A&E, or is he representing himself – or something in between – like a brand? These are not actors; they were hired by a television channel to be filmed acting as themselves. Is it really all that surprising that a show that puts a lot of Christianity into their general theme has a main character – who leads grace and prayers at every meal – that might be of the opinion that he doesn’t agree with a lifestyle?
Did I miss something or did Robertson simply state he didn’t agree with their lifestyle choice as it pertains to his faith, which itself is an opinion? Wasn’t he asked for his opinion?
This is where we have really outdone ourselves. We are condemning people for having opinions – popular or unpopular, which is both as intolerant as we say the speaker of said comments is and also basically demanding they not be free to share those opinions – even when asked.
I watch Duck Dynasty and love the show, but I also have friends or family members who are gay. Neither affects my opinions of the other, nor my love for my friends and family. It is not my right to judge, but only to live my life the way I believe best reflects what I personally value – not what values I shove upon other people.
We can respect without disrespect. That’s tolerance.
However, if asked in a setting the same as Robertson was, I’d give my opinion and ultimately make someone unhappy.
Because you can’t win – or break even – anymore in America.
We are divided by so many things, by politics, faith, race, gender, age, industry, intellect, location – that there will always be disagreement and conflicting opinion. It is allowed to exist based on the republican principles the country was created to implore.
Except when it doesn’t meet our criteria – which is, basically, agree with me or else.
It would behoove us to focus a bit more one what we do share in common than what we do not. Seems to be a bit more positive than the negative attention given and drawn from situations in which ultimately impact our lives very, very little.
What benefit do we get out of airing this dirty laundry? Is anyone actually listening when you fire off your written feelings? Isn’t that itself an oxymoron? How can you feel or emote with a status update, genuinely? They are statements.
And we seem to be missing another key point: it is out there now. You can’t take back what you posted; scrub everyone’s eyes and minds of what you said. There opinion of you and whomever you are talking about is partially related to what you post. 
I once read this: “The last thing you know about yourself is your effect.”
Perhaps. But we often tend to think quiet highly of ourselves, our opinions and our effect, thank you very much. However, we don’t understand the impression that we make upon others with these acts of revenge, acts of broadcasting personal information about a shared situation with everyone on our friends list.
People are drawn to drama like moths to a flame, so we spit it out and it confirms that we have supporters out there who think we are smart, attractive, funny or likable.
But what do we think of ourselves? Do we even know anymore or are we so busy branding and marketing ourselves and our crazy that we forgot what tact, a general sense of decency and moral value look like?
Whether or not you are Phil Robertson or the person who loathes what he says does not really matter to your life. What others hear about what’s going on in your life only impacts their impression of you – not the person(s) you are talking about.
So bite your lip.
Get a grip.
Save some face.
Do yourself and the rest of the world a favor.
Hide your crazy. 
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belief, Logic, Parenting, Philosophy, Religion, Santa Claus

Believably Unbelievable

Another calendar year has nearly come and gone. 

We’re facing “The Holidays” again, left wondering where 2013 went and feeling like spring or summer was just last week when it was months ago.
The reminders of the passage of time are all around us, constant notifications that the world continues to press on, whether we want it to or not. And we’re constantly battling the notion we may be missing the good stuff.
My most recent encounter with this came earlier this week, when my family renewed a family tradition of watching Christmas movies, like “The Santa Clause.”
And as my seven-year-old daughter climbed into my lap, the scene near the beginning that is the crux of this enjoyable farce hit home: the conversation about whether Santa Claus is real between Charlie and, and…Tim Taylor, er, Tim Allen – wait, I’ve got it – Scott Calvin.

Our children haven’t asked us about Santa being real yet, really, just like they haven’t asked about Jesus or heaven being real. 

That is not meant to combine the two onto some equal ground, mind you, but to merely point out the association of belief in something you cannot see. 
So many logical, rational and data-driven people will tell you it is dangerous to foster notions of a fat man in a suit taking presents to every child in the world that’s been good in one night, just the same as many non-Christians or atheists question the legitimacy of Jesus – from conception to birth to death. 
Now I’m not looking to turn this into a religious forum, it is not my job to judge beliefs one way or the other against my own. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. 

But belief is simply an opinion with conviction, and some choose to back up their beliefs, convictions and opinions with facts. Others with emotion. Belief is just an acceptance of something as truth or factual – with a heavy dose of perception of what we allow ourselves to emotionally accept as true or fact. 
We use facts, pictures, models, graphs and statistics to prove what we want others to believe, but in our world, belief is an emotion, a feeling.
You can show me all kinds of numbers on why Android is better than Apple, or vice versa. All it comes down to is what I like, what I think once I use both products. We can argue over politics, but that’s as much belief and emotion as anything else. We try to use facts and figures there as well. We even break down human relationships to statistics and figures, qualities, advantages and disadvantages.
But what about what we cannot explain? Why someone lives or dies through an ordeal? How certain events have inexpiable outcomes, how they defy logic and science and physics? What makes you happy and sad?
Research has found that the brain is sensitive to any form of belief that improves the chances of survival. Just like that, we have our answer for why we love, why we believe in God – or do not – and for the purposes of this prose, why we choose to allow our children to believe in Santa.
It’s an idea, more than an actual person. Does Santa exist? I don’t know. 

But neither do you.
Perhaps he did hundreds of years ago, like any legend, and simply delivered toys one year to the children of some small village. 
We often say that when people pass on, they are in a better place. We do this for a variety of reasons. Perhaps we believe it, perhaps we’re saying it to someone for comfort. Is that true? I don’t know. But it brings us some sense of peace all the same.
So is allowing your children to believe in such an idea detrimental? I don’t know. 

But neither do you.
It can foster vivid creativity, as the pure imagination of what happens in the early hours of December 25 runs wild. If at any time you believed in Santa as a child, just think of the mental images and scenarios your mind envisioned. 

Again, this is not endorsing Santa Claus the person, more explaining the idea that allowing belief is a good thing.
We truly don’t know what happens when we die. There is no absolute fact because no statistics, figures or images can support it for us. But the belief or lack of belief in religion, in mythical holiday figures, is more or less a coping mechanism in our brains for just how big and unknown the world is. It would be quite difficult to deal with the vastness or mystery of it all if we did not cope through belief.
For some, enjoyment and peace in life can be found in believing in a reason, a higher power. For others, not believing explains a chaotic theory of life. Either way, the person has chosen that path as a way to believe in the purpose of their own existence.
Life is an emotion, a sensation, really – that has no explanation. There may be all kinds of statistics, but those statistics are just numbers really, not people.
For the logical, Santa Claus is as much a farce as creation, as believing in miracles. For this group, for example, saw the end of the Auburn-Alabama game last week as merely the end of a sequence of statistics that led to a low probability that occurred given the right set of circumstances. In fact, the probability was .007%. 
For the emotive, it was a game won out of belief, out of some special moment that occurred because of want, need, desire. And belief.
It really comes down to choice: what you choose to believe – but believing in something, all the same.
As a man, built on gut reactions, emotions and feelings, I see the creativity, the vivid imagination of my children, who currently believe in Santa Claus, who can see heaven in their minds and think Disney World exists in the sky (because we take off on an airplane and land there) and I believe that these are the kinds of children who might grow up to do something really cool.
I don’t know if that means cool as in changing the world cool. 

But neither do you.

At the very least, if allowing the perception or the belief that such a figure exists fosters special neurons in their brains to fire that spark imagination and creativity, then I am personally fine with that. Even after they stop believing in that figure, those neurons and synapses will still continue firing, still dreaming, still creating. Because they believe such things could exist. 

This is how you create. And creating is good.

It’s the step that happens before all those statistics showing how effective or ineffective the creation was. And when you create something, it has to be believed before it’s seen.
Funny how that works.
Seeing isn’t believing.
Believing is seeing.
And perfectly fine for you and your kids if it happens to be a large old man in a red velvet suit who squeezes down chimneys, eats cookies, never finishes the milk and reverse burglarizes your overly decorated home on a secular holiday.
Just go with it.

Before another year passes and you miss out on all the good stuff. 


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Brooklyn Nets, Jason Kidd, Jim Jackson, Kevin Garnett, Lawrence Frank., Mikhail Prokhorov, NBA

No Kidding

Jason Kidd put top assistant Lawrence Frank in a long timeout.

Or he treated him like Fredo in “The Godfather.”

You could apply a hundred jokes and analogies to this – and I just might.

But let’s not kidd ourselves (sorry, couldn’t help it).

Jason Kidd is a megalomaniac, a certified nut-job and this shouldn’t surprise anyone. A man who’s been in domestic abuse situations, was in a public rivalry with Jim Jackson over Toni Braxton back in the day and just this past summer had a DUI that got him suspended for the first two games of the season might have a few emotional issues.

The fact that Lawrence Frank’s punishment is to do daily reporting for roughly $1 million per year because of some comical fallout the first week of the NBA season shouldn’t surprise anyone. Jason Kidd flew off the handle all the time as a player, why should this be any different when he’s a head coach?

Out of timeouts against the Los Angeles Lakers last week, he did what any logical basketball coach would do: begged a player to run into him to spill his drink onto the court – and then wonder aimlessly like a confused mental patient trying to pick up the ice while his assistants drew up a play.

Some people call this gamesmanship. For anyone else, that might be true. But for Jason Kidd – the man who once dyed his hair blonde in Phoenix – it’s just par for the course.

Jason Kidd doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. Not a surprise. He smooth talked his way into Mikhail Prokhorov’s deep, unassuming pockets to coach a team that on the surface was tailor-made for a new head coach: a cast of veterans like Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Deron Williams and Jason Terry.

But Jason Kidd couldn’t come up with something like Doc Rivers did in Boston, preaching unity, Ubuntu and whatever else Doc did that made Boston such a special place from 2008-2011(ish).

Jason Kidd certainly isn’t Phil Jackson, a Zen master of player management who got the most out of the biggest stars and somehow has loyalty to this day from the sport’s biggest egos.

But Kidd is not even capable of managing his own ego, let alone anyone else’s.

The Nets –a team that should most definitely be vying for a spot in the top three of the Eastern Conference – are a mess. At 5-13, the Nets are in 13th place in the East. The roster is built for now, but is playing like it’s built for 2015. This doesn’t all fall on Jason Kidd – but the mismanagement does.

Like begging for Frank to join your staff and begging the front office to make him the highest-paid assistant in the NBA, then turning on him because you disagree with his schemes? Well, J-Kidd, what are YOUR schemes? Do you have any original thoughts?

A typical dictator move, to force your assistants to do the heavy lifting and then throw them under the bus when it doesn’t go right. And throw some stank on it, please, by calling it a reassignment. And for an extra kick in the pants, let’s tell people you’re writing reports for the foreseeable future and banned from the bench.

The buzz on Kidd around the league is that once he turns on you, you’re going to get the brunt of his crazy.

Clearly, there’s plenty of that to go around.

No Kidding.
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children, Parenting, Thanksgiving, The Fresh Prince, Will Smith

Parents Just Don’t Understand (Revised)

The Fresh Prince was so right.
Parents just don’t understand. New ones, old ones, middles ones and soon-to-be ones. We all don’t get it.
Will Smith once famously rapped about how parents didn’t get their kids. Ironically, now Smith is a parent. Well, I listened to him and hundreds of other spunky artists when I was a kid. And now I’m a parent, too.
Not sure what it would sound like, but the title could stay the same.
The other night, we watched the lovely interaction of my brother-in-law and his wife as they are merely days away from their first child being born. And the hilarious back-and-forth between husband and wife pre-baby is enough to make anyone buckle over with laugh pain, but I couldn’t help but think of how things are about to change for them.
My wife and I tried to dispense some of our ancient wisdom of parenting onto them. Feeling like we helped – cause, hey, we got this thing down, baby – shortly after everyone left, we put our four little, well-raised angels to bed.
And then reality slapped us with something called a check.
Sitting down for the first time all night, within two minutes our five –year old came in to announce the 2-year-old had pooped, only to find he had not, but now the lights were on, the screaming had started and the routine broken. 

The red-head ended up in our bed.
Following hours of tossing, turning and crying – and that was just my wife and I – the alarm clock went off and we began our day. Just a few hours later, as my wife went to the Y for a workout (for fitness and sanity), she turned to find little red was asleep, because of course he was.
Sigh.
She turned the van around and went home, because that’s just what you do.
These are the real things that happen as parents of children. Your phone is taken over with random snapshots of the ground or someone’s pant leg, your Netflix account only recommends animated PG movies and your car will become a van. A van, that is, with health hazard codes, unidentified stickiness and something that smells, but can never be located.
The carpet will stain, beds won’t always get made and laundry will become endless, a vast sea of socks, underwear and things you swear they could not have worn for more than 18.5 seconds before changing. Again.
You will come to find yourself shoving every ounce of adulthood into the hour or two between your kids bedtime and yours. R-rated movies, recorded TV, political, religious and intellectual conversations, calendar planning, reading and more are gorged on until you pass out from over-stimulation and exhaustion.
Going to and coming home from vacations is, quite simply, a form of torture that should only be used by dictators from the Middle Ages. It resembles Home Alone, honestly – counting heads, scrambling to pack at the last minute, someone spilling milk all over the food – except you didn’t actually get to sleep in and John Hughes didn’t pen this script.
Going shopping – to either the grocery store or to the mall is an elevated form of that torture. You’ll just want to give up. At any given time, eight hands are shoving things into our cart that don’t remotely belong there. And your five-year-old is bound to say something fantastic, like, “A BRA! Gross!”  
Sounds just awesome, right? Well, it is.
We don’t know anything about being parents, but we do know just a little bit more about being parents to our kids than before we started. The only real advice you can get is that it’s your life, your kid and you’ll figure it out all on your own, in your own way. What works for us might not for you – and it certainly isn’t the way your parents did it between 25-35 years ago.
From time to time, you’ll just wish it was a bit more quiet and calm, with fewer injuries to your children and to you. No, seriously:  Dads, wear a cup.
Occasionally you will hope you don’t have to read site words, review homework, wash dishes, give baths and laundry. You’ll just long for a little more time with your spouse. Or maybe even by yourself.
Then one day, in the very near future, you’ll get it. As my wife says all the time, they will have their own lives and we’ll have a clean, empty house with nothing but time.
She’s right.
I’m certain at that point we’ll feel out of our element, without the structure of any structure, thrust into a new situation and expected to survive, adjust and carry on.
You know, kind of like we were when we started having kids and lost all of that so-called freedom and beloved individuality.
So today I’m thankful that we laugh a lot, that we stare at them sleeping (in a totally non-creepy way), that we hug them, that we discipline them. I’m thankful for the loud, constant, smiling, annoying, chaotic change. I’m thankful for it, I love it and I’m glad it’s been given to us.
Forget pragmatic, sensible and a life based on logic or fact. There’s really no room for it here, in the ballyhooed “real world.”
And thank goodness for that.
Parents just don’t understand.
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