Reba Toney, a former call screener for the Dennis Prager radio show, now hosts a couple of talkshows of her own on Christian radio.
A single mom, she’s published a new book called "The Rating Game: The Foolproof Formula for Finding Your Perfect Soul Mate".
According to her MySpace page: "If you’re always getting dumped then you’re dating people who are too good for you. If you’re always dumping people then you’re dating people that are too good for you. . Use the Rating Games fun 1-10 scale in face, body, personality, and life situation. Learn how t rate yourself and others, so that you date only those who rate the same as you!"
Reba appeared on Dennis Prager’s show yesterday. She said to think of dating as like a job interview. You may not be qualified for dating certain people just as you may not be qualified for certain jobs. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Your experience will be good for some people and not for others. You may be under or over-qualified for that person you want to date.
Dennis: I was mesmerized by this. I think it was in Psychology Today 20 years ago. Yale or somebody did a study at mixers and they found that most people did have a self-worth number and they would approach within the ballpark of what was available to that number.
I do this. It’s intensely painful but I often think of certain women as being out of my league (too beautiful or too classy or too accomplished) and other women as beneath me. I get a comfortable feeling with other women that I can land them. I’ve never broken out of this pattern. I’ve never dated anyone who I thought was out of my league for longer than a couple of months and I always got dumped.
Reba says women tend to understate their worth. They look in the mirror and see their flaws. Men look in the mirror and tend to exaggerate their worth.
I remember one beautiful female convert to Judaism telling me about the amazingly misplaced self-confidence of nebbishy Jewish men trying to pick her up. "Jewish men don’t know their level," she says. "They were raised by their mothers to believe they could be president of the United States."
So what happens when a man dates above his level?
Reba: "You see that all the time. The phrase that shows that it’s happening is, ‘She won’t stop nagging me.’ Well, you wanted someone better than you and you got it. Now she has expectations of you that you can’t meet."
Dennis: "You get what you’re dating."
Reba: "It’s not fair to marry someone expecting them to change."
Dennis: "How do you rate yourself?"
Reba: "In four areas: Face, body, personality, life situation. Rate yourself and then your exes. You rate what you think is a ten and then evaluate how close do you come to this. If you think Jessica Alba is a ten, then you rate yourself accordingly."
Dennis: "Looks matter more to men than to women."
Reba: "It does at the beginning…"
"The book came out of my experience with marriage."
"You can figure this out before you give someone your phone number."
Major Disconnect Between Whites & Blacks On Dogs
Skip Bayless, my favorite sports commentator, said on ESPN today: There’s a major disconnect between the way whites and blacks view dogs. For most blacks, dogs are just animals. For most whites, such as myself, dogs are part of the family. I’ve let my dogs sleep in my bed, kiss me on the mouth, and eat food off my plate. I’ve never seen a black person at an animal rights rally. I’m sure there have been but I don’t remember seeing any.
Blacks think that torturing and killing dogs is wrong but that it is not worth two years in prison.
Rob Parker: I loved my dog but I never think about him in terms of "Rest in Peace."
Luke says: I don’t get white people in this respect. I think they’re nuts. Oy, the things white people think, such as that pets are "part of the family."
Monica Showalter writes on my Facebook: My spanish teacher was a mexican from tijuana who was educated in the US. He said that when he was first getting used to US culture, he was appalled at his roomate, putting up on his mantle a portrait of his mother and a portrait of his family dog. He said that was the grossest thing he ever saw and it was not done in Mexico.
During the 1991 Oakland fires, a Yugoslav immigrant was quoted in the news as being appalled that in the great evacuations down the narrow wooded fiery roads, the good people of Piedmont, mostly whites, prioritized saving their dogs over their family possessions. Dogs were the first thing people sought to save. ‘It’s just a dog!’ the Yugi said – adding that they should be saving their furniture and other possessions as any sensible Yugi would do.
Anastasia Mendez writes: My uncle took his new pup to training classes twice a week and only fed him the best food, never allowing any sort of table scrap in case it upset his digestion.
I know of a white person (egads!) who has his apartment full of fighting dogs that bark all day and night, are left out in the rain, appear to be malnutrition. Neighbors have been petitioning animal control for months to have the dogs removed.
Cultural differences are one thing — as Monica has demonstrated — but the terms "black" and "white" are far too encompassing, don’t ya think?
GINA POSTS: I live in Mexico, and whenever our dog gives us any problems our relatives seem to be appalled that we don’t just go dump him on the side of the road like they did with their pain-in-the-ass dogs. It’s considered to be a frivolous waste of money to take them to the vet or to spend money on training. I can’t even imagine what they’d say if I put a framed picture of my stupid dog up in my house!
MONICA POSTS: I think pet-love is a function of affluence. In China, people eat cats. In Hong Kong, they have pet protection societies and nothing is too good for fluffy.
But I think it’s also an anglo-saxon thing, and the more you are exposed to the culture, whatever your race, the more likely you are to consider pets people. Nobody gets gushier about animals … Read Morethan the Brits, absolutely nobody. They go all soggy around animals, they invented animal protection societies and the most militant vegetarians out there are Brits. Around the issue of whaling, for instance, I read a stiff, contemptuous statement by a Japanese government official, dismissing british concerns about whaling, saying it was merely the thinking of Brits, "based on the Anglo-Saxon belief that whales are people." The Japanese didn’t know quite what else to make of it.
DAVID WRIGHT WRITES ABOUT WHY BLACK PEOPLE SUPPORT MICHAEL VICK: