It was fascinating theater to listen to two ESPN analysts debate the latest NBA gambling allegations. One was straining to wrap the alleged actions in the convenient, if tragic, blanket of addiction. The other cut straight through the noise, effectively stating: “It ain’t addiction, it’s just plain stupid.”
We all hope the allegations prove false. And we should all acknowledge that addiction is a terrible, destructive force—a national crisis that devastates lives and families, demanding far more aid and empathy than it currently receives.
But let’s set the clinical disaster aside for a moment and focus on the simpler, more persistent human failing: stupidity.
It seems we men, across all levels of prestige and power, are simply overrepresented in the gallery of boneheaded decisions. We see it everywhere: the powerful politician who dares the press to catch him in a transparent secret, the college athlete who wraps his car around a pole, convinced of his own immunity, the financial advisor who takes “just one more risk.” If a headline starts with “Man attempts to…” you can almost guarantee the ending is going to involve a trip to the emergency room or court.
Women, conversely, appear to have a built-in safety regulator. They assess, they calculate, they generally avoid setting the house on fire just to see what the flames look like. We rarely read about women performing these feats of high-risk, low-reward foolishness.
And that leads us to the core mystery. I wonder if the answer lies in Genesis. When the Creator formed Adam, did he accidentally forget to install the Restraining Gene (RG-1)? And then, when he used Adam’s rib to form Eve, did he correct his mistake by making sure that rib was saturated with the good stuff—the gene that prevents the spectacular, public undoing?
Maybe it’s not a flaw in Adam, but a feature missing from the first male model. Whatever the reason, the data is in: men are the world champions of “Hold my beer and watch this.”
Good one!