Another Reason Why I Switched

Looks like ol' Swanny, Lynn Swann, is gonna run for governor of Pennsylvania. Against that ol' mafioso Don Ed Rendell, he of the Magic Philly Money Machine. As long as Swann keeps the charm up and doesn't drop the pass, he's in. Touchdown. So says Otto.

An article in a Philadelphia online publication takes some time to highlight the phenomenon of former athletes who become politicians. But it fails to ask the question I think is most interesting, and gets to the true heart of the matter politically: How come almost ALL of them are Republicans?

The liberal answer would likely be: Because they make truckloads of money and want the tax rates lowered so they can keep it all for themselves, the greedy bastards. Add to that the fact that so many of them are these ultraright religious freaks, praying before and after games...

Didja know there's actually a website called stevelargentsucks? That's the perfect encapsulation of the current state of the Democratic party. All hate and envy, all the time...

Otto will give you his take. The professional athlete may well be the truest, purest form of entrepeneur there is. He or she takes a skill -- which, by the way, many of them credit God for, hence the gratitude and non-secularism -- and develops it to the absolute maximum, and then goes out and tries to make a living with it. These people know the odds, like for every 100,000 high school football or basketball players there's maybe one or two that make it to the pros, and yet they CHOOSE to go ahead with it anyways.

There's risk all over the place. Bodies break down over time, no matter what you're doing, but especially in sports that's deadly to a career. No cushy tenured positions in sports, no sir. It's all about performance, and results. One injury and you're finished.

But there's also reward -- BIG reward -- if you work hard enough and keep the vision.

At which point, the typical Democrat fingers your paycheck and says, "It's not FAIR that you make that much money. Give it to me...NOW."

You would think that if someone chooses to enter a lower risk profession, one that by the cold hard rules of the marketplace is necessarily going to pay less, that person would more or less be happy with and understand their salary.

You'd be wrong.

It took Otto a while to figure this out...that the party he chose to join in his youth was the party that denigrated rather than celebrated success stories. But it WAS figured out, eventually...

And guys like Swanny, well, they're just another reason why I switched.