Christine Quinn is New York City's city council speaker, probably the second-most-powerful person in the city's government after the mayor. She's running for mayor herself this year. And this New York Times report on Quinn's upcoming memoir leads off with an abhorrent piece of information: when Quinn began dating the woman who is now her wife, she abandoned her lifelong Mets fandom for the Yankees at the woman's request. Some questions about this:
1) What kind of person demands that their romantic partners root for the same baseball team as them?
2) Like, if you're such a big fan of a team that you couldn't stand to live with someone who didn't root for them, wouldn't you also be disgusted by someone who was clearly not a sports fan at all, i.e. someone who would give up so quickly on their alleged team?
3) Why would someone running for mayor of New York admit that she had given up on a team with a huge number of fans in that city?
And most perplexingly,
4) Why do politicians who don't care about sports continue to pretend tepidly that they do, when there is no upside (if you're not really a fan there is no way you're going to be able to fake it enough to get actual cred for it in the way that George W. Bush did with baseball and Barack Obama does with basketball) and there is so much downside to being exposed as a charlatan? Does anyone really believe that Christine Quinn is now a Yankees "fan" in any real sense? Why are politicians so afraid that people will think they're weird for not liking sports? 40% of Americans don't consider themselves sports fans and it's not like those people are ostracized by their family members and co-workers. Christine Quinn is an openly gay woman who's written a memoir that includes admissions that she's had problems with bulimia and alcoholism. But she can't admit that she doesn't really care who wins baseball games.
It's 2013. In the spirit of the Gay Straight Alliance, it's time for those of us who are sports fans to have the courage to say we're ready for a leader who isn't.
h/t Joe Coscarelli