What's Fair?

Goodbye to Carson Kressley.  Carson was fun to watch but he certainly was one of the most uncoordinated dancers I’ve ever seen on the show.  I enjoyed watching him dance but it is really confusing to see good dancers leave ahead of someone that isn’t doing so well.  Still disturbed that Chynna Phillips got eliminated so soon.  I really wonder sometimes if it’s true that it’s the fans that keep people on; can Carson really have had more fans than Chynna Phillips? 

            Fairness anywhere is very subjective.  Whether it is Dancing with the Stars, at work, family dynamics or anything else fairness is often in the eye of the beholder.  For instance, in the family each sibling is only looking at their own situation when they cry out “it isn’t fair” and until they are older and can analyze the situation it will feel like unfairness in the parents’ decision to let the brother play the accordion while the sister can’t have piano lessons.  A nine year old doesn’t understand that a piano costs thousands while an accordion can be rented for $2.00 (back in the day). 

            However in the working world we do find unfairness occurs more frequently than one would like to see but as adults we have to shrug our shoulders and say “c’est la vie”.  Now why is that?  It’s because if you cannot control the outcome there is nothing else to do.  Certainly one can whine and complain but the truth is that doesn’t make you look very good and it doesn’t change anything in the end.  Instead you either accept it or you move on.

            Politically speaking if one sees unfairness one can protest, or again, do nothing.  For many of us in North America we choose not to see unfairness until it strikes home.  Yesterday I read an editorial in the National Post and my thought to the writer is “you simply refuse to look at the issue correctly”.  The article was about the Occupy Wall Street protests and the “we are the 99%” posters.  The writer gave a slanted story which only looked at the world wide distribution of wealth rather than the wealth inside Canada and/or the United States.  So if the reader doesn’t know the rest of the story they would think the writer was right on the money (pun intended).  Ah, no.  

            There is unfairness.  And there is corruption.  Two different things entirely.

            So what is happening on Dancing with the Stars?  What is happening with Occupy Wall Street?