This morning I got up at seven in the morning to watch the U.S. Women's Olympic Football Team. I haven't really gotten into the Olympics yet, but I have seen the two games our women have played in what we call soccer (the rest of the world, appropriately, calls it football). They tied China, basically meaning that there will be another big time game later on in the Olympic Football tournament.

The U.S. came out strong in the first half and took the early lead, but the second half mostly belonged to China. Which explains the tie. A missed penalty kick (the penalty was a handball--it was incidental, but in the penalty box, not much in considered incidental) lost the win for the U.S. China and the U.S. are pretty evenly matched and watching them play again will be a lot of fun. Good, close, tense games are what these two adversaries play.

Over the last few weeks, Vice President Gore has taken the lead in most national polls. For most of the summer--up to the Democratic convention--he was losing to G.W. Bush by about the same margin he now leads with. So what do these numbers mean?

Numbers mean whatever you want them to mean. There is a little sound bite one of the radio stations in town like to run which says that 26% of men want their women smart and only 8% want them sexy. Well, what about the other two-thirds of men? Do they want their women to be beautiful? Have big butts? Or maybe to be really good cooks?

But since my day job is basically to explain numbers like these (albeit about television and print commercials), I'll do my best: it means the candidates are tied. The people sitting on the fence, but leaning toward Bush in the summer, are still sitting on the fence, but now lean toward Gore. It's where they will eventually leap that everyone wants to know.

The fight for the White House between these two is much less interesting and exciting than most women's football games. There is no spontaneity. There is no spark. There is no burst of energy down the left side with quick crossings to open strikers in the middle. There is stumping. There is sputtering. And there is a lot of bullshit. But I guess I shouldn't complain too much, this is how the game of politics is played. The problem is with the game itself, rather than the participants.

If you listen to Bush, the difference between he and Gore is choice. Gore wants the government to pigeonhole who gets tax cuts (by adding incentives for sending kids to college and having kids, etc.) and Bush wants to give money away to everyone. Bush is pro-choice and Gore is pro-life. Except when it comes to abortion and other actual personal choice issues, where the positions are switched.

I find this interesting. Republicans want you to have all the choice in the world when it comes to making money, but when it comes to actual life choices, they want to limit everything. Democrats are kind of the other way around, although, to be honest, they're pretty pro-business as well. But they do let you choose (when it comes to health and abortion--not drugs or seatbelts) about how to live your life.

Bush caved on the whole debate issue, although he claims that this is what he wanted all along. When he was in the lead, he was feeling pretty good about everything--now he claims he's been the underdog all along (remember, he did this when McCain had a brief surge). I've always wondered how you can justify jackknife reversals in your mind like this. I mean, sure, I change my mind about things, but at least I admit it. And then there was that whole "rat" ad thing. Bush denies it exists (even though the Republican party pulled the ad, kind of admitting something was going on there) and calls it all a distraction from the real issues.

But the entire campaign process is a distraction from the real issue, which is the vote on November 7. It's all waving with your right hand while you sock em with the left.

And, just to prove that this race is all tied up, we get the old standby stump of every campaign since the 80s: the evils of the entertainment industry. Eminem is bad. Video games are bad. The rally cry is "Remember Natural Born Killers!" All the candidates are against these evils of American Culture. Of course, the names are pretty much changed from last time around. Remember when Marilyn Manson was the bad boy? How about 2 Live Crew? Or Guns N Roses, Motley Crue or Ozzy Osbourne and his bat biting stage antics? Led Zeppelin sold their souls to the devil--just like their hero Robert Johnson. They are corrupting the soul of this country--at least until they get middle aged and go on that big sold out reunion tour because they've grown up and out of all that adolescent crap--even though they still sing the same songs.

And you think that "rats" ad is a smoke screen. Here's an issue that will NEVER get solved. Lynne Cheney, wife of Bush's V.P. choice, rallies against Gore's connections with the entertainment industry (Republicans don't get as much money from that lobby), but then says that board members of companies have no real power (G.W. Bush was on the board of a Hollywood production company for a while, and he let such terrible films as The Hitcher get produced). But if the board members of the companies have no power to stop objectionable material, who does?

Personally, I think this year has been a terrible year for movies. There has been such a long string of crappy, mediocre, and tired flicks coming out this year, I almost want to quit reviewing them (it's a side job)--except that I need beer money. I will take a stand and say it's not the reviewers fault that the movies suck--I think it's the producers' collective fault.

So it's all tied up with a little less than two months to go. At least with the U.S. Women's Olympic Football team there will be a satisfying decision in a few weeks. People will still be bitching about this election four years from now, when Ralph Nader runs again against, well, whoever. Of course, the U.S. and China will still be playing each other in women's football with the same kind of extreme ferocity, too.

To paraphrase a bad song from a really bad Hollywood movie, that's the circle of life.

Matt Worley doesn't understand why some people don't get the connection between sports and politics.