A little knowledge can complicate football and shopping

Even though you are a Bears fan and your opinion about the Super Bowl holds even less clout than a Donald Trump presidential endorsement, you rooted for likable, scruffy quarterback Eli Manning and his New York Giants to beat pretty boy, celebrity quarterback Tom Brady and his New England Patriots.

You felt even better about your decision when you saw the postgame video of Brady's wife, Gisele Bündchen, dropping an F-bomb as she whined about Patriot receivers not catching her hubby's passes. It is, after all, hard to feel sorry for a rich, good-looking pro athlete who endures a heartbreaking defeat by going home with his wife, who is even richer and better looking.

But, if you know somebody who needs a kidney transplant, you might have been rooting for Tom Brady, whose advocacy for a former coach in need of a transplant has given the National Kidney Foundation needed publicity and recruited donors. Or, if you are a fan of Tim Tebow's in-game prayers, you might have been rooting for the Patriots because Brady's supermodel wife sought divine help for her husband a couple of days before the Super Bowl by tweeting, "Tommy really needs our prayer, our support and our love." Or maybe that just made you smirk more when Brady's game-ending "Hail Mary" pass was an incompletion and an answer to the Giants' prayers.

Readers who don't like football can have a similar debate about the halftime show, which was either an uplifting performance by a play-by-the-rules Madonna (with wholesome cheerleaders) or simply an offensive hand gesture featuring M.I.A.'s middle finger.

Ignoring the big picture to focus on a single fact can be a dangerous thing, especially in a nation with strong, diverse opinions.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation, the breast-cancer advocacy group with the pink ribbons and the feel-good vibe, raised ire last week when it cut funding to Planned Parenthood in a move that was more about the politics of abortion than it was about screening for breast cancer. The resulting online mob voiced such vehement and instant criticism that the foundation quickly reversed its position, thereby ticking off the crowd who was pleasantly surprised by the earlier decision. The foundation's "like" tallies on Facebook went from "like" to "unlike" to "like" and vice versa.

Meanwhile, the "One Million Moms" group urged people to call their local J.C. Penney stores and complain about the store's celebrity spokeswoman, Ellen DeGeneres, because she's a lesbian. By the time Americans became aware of that story, gay-rights supporters responded with a "Stand Up for Ellen" campaign of their own. And suddenly J.C. Penney's became the object of the online like/unlike tug-of-war.

I like Ellen, who is funny, smart, charitable, was nice to my brother once during a chance meeting long before she got famous and seems to have a much more stable marriage and sense of family values than many heterosexual couples. (And, for those of you shallow enough to care about such things, her wife, Portia de Rossi, is better looking than some of Tom Brady's old girlfriends or current wife.)

But instead of buying my new pair of gloves at J.C. Penney's to show support for human rights and make a political statement, I buy a leather pair on sale for $13 from a small-town independently owned store playing canned Christian music seldom heard outside of a funeral parlor.

"This is the first time I've heard 'The Old Rugged Cross' coming out of a store's speakers while I shop," I mention to the clerk as I pay for my gloves. The kindly, elderly woman, no doubt making assumptions about me after catching me singing along with the first verse of the old hymn, feels comfortable enough to offer up her opinions on atheists, religion, politics and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, all of which are 180 degrees from my own, forcing me to bite my tongue.

If we knew where every business owner, store clerk, athlete, coach and waiter stood on every issue, we might find reasons to boycott them all. It's tricky. Even people who cancel newspaper subscriptions because of a columnist might be taking money from other hardworking people who share their views.

In order to get along in this world, you sometimes have to search for the things you have in common instead of the things that divide you. That is how I am able to look forward to an upcoming brunch at the home of a New York Mets fan.