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Title: If you�re not Athletic, can you still become President?
Tags: humor politics role models heroes
Blog Entry: With the national election as hot as a reality show, it is a good time to point out that athletics significantly influences how Americans vote. In the US , people don�t vote for a klutz. To win an election, you need to be perceived as an athlete, as someone who can score. Up until the end of March, one of Barack Obama�s best attributes was that he was over 40 and still played basketball. Then he made the mistake of bowling 37--less than his age. That dropped him in the polls until baseball fans pictured Hillary throwing out the first pitch at Nationals Park . It doesn�t matter how personally sedentary you are, as Americans, we idolize sports figures. Why else do I own a shirt that says �BECKHAM� across the back? Why doesn�t my shirt say �MJ�? Why does my son have a shirt that reads �O�NEAL�? After all, my son is not a 7�1� black man. In fact, he would need 1.5 clones and a lot of suntan oil to equal one Shaq. Would Gerald Ford have been a successful president if he hadn�t tripped so much? Would Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan have won if they�d never sat on a horse? Why do presidents call major league teams as soon as they win a championship? Why does Bush ride his bike alongside Lance Armstrong? Surely Lance is not advising GW on Iraq . Identifying with sports heroes makes us feel good about ourselves and about others who share our feelings. The downside, as pointed out by Jennifer Warner on WebMD, is that it is short-lived. Maybe we�ll all remember that after the election. See References: Jennifer Warner�s engaging 2004 article on why we need sports heroes: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=50345 America has become a land of shortages, and heroes are just another one of them: http://www.drake.edu/journalism/CenturysEnd/heroes.html