I detest the Super Bowl.
Much of this hatred originates from my overall loathing of the game of football. And yes, I'll admit it, we liberals are haters; you're right, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and whatever other clever primates the GOP cares to unleash. So, really, what I'm admitting here is that I hate America.
I spent Sunday evening at - where else? - Dick's Pizza, finishing up the New York Times as a multitude gathered to watch the mega-materialistic, hyper-jingoist media suckfest and orgy of money, violence, machismo, and tits that is the Super Bowl. Icepick Ray tapped me on the shoulder and proffered a plate of appetizers. "It's barbecued goose wrapped in bacon," he announced, already slurring his words. I stabbed one with a toothpick knowing full well that the morsel would send my bad cholesterol skyrocketing.
"You only live once," I said. "What the hell, it is the annual game of the century."
"You're damned right," Icepick Mark said, nodding. "And these were homemade by Major Bob. He shot the goose and cured the bacon." Well, there's something. I sank my teeth into the hors d'oeuvre and unleashed a taste torrent of wild game, salt, pork, honey, tomato, and vinegar. The mouthful will shave a good year and a half off my life but so what? It tasted better than a thousand carrot or celery sticks.
Major Bob, a silver-haired bear of a man, is the new resident Republican ideologue of Dick's He has replaced Sellersburg Randy, who held the title up until the fall. Randy'd backed, in order, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and, grudgingly, John McCain, switching allegiances as each candidate dropped out of the primary race. In September, with McCain beginning his inexorable slide in the polls, I chanced to ask Randy who he thought might win the election. The contest still could have gone either way at the time.
"Oh, it's in the bag," Randy replied, dismissively waving his hand. "He can't lose. The only thing that'll beat him is if he gets caught with a 13-year-old in a motel room."
"You're that certain?" I asked.
"Oh yeah. Look at the polls. Look what's happening," Randy said.
I was amazed he'd sound so sanguine considering the impending paddling of his beloved party.
"So doesn't it depress you that Obama's gonna win?"
Randy nearly dropped his pint of beer. "Obama?" he shouted. "McCain's gonna win!"
With nearly two months to go before the election, I found it odd that anyone on either side could predict victory so assuredly. "You're sure?" I pressed.
"Absolutely sure," Randy said.
I had to figure out a way to capitalize on this kind of hubris. "Tell you what," I offered. "I'll bet you a drink."
"You are on," Randy replied as we shook on it.
The election, of course, fell on a Tuesday - Trivia night. Randy to that point had been one of the core members of Team Gorlock with Skip the Trombonist and me. When CNN announced that Obama had gone over the top in electoral votes, Skip cheered, Major Bob shook his head and cursed, and I sat silently, drinking in the history of it all.
I paid for my own drinks that night because Randy never showed up. Skip and I were puzzled because he was as much a fixture at Dick's as a barstool. We haven't seen him since. Either Sellersburg Randy's depressed that the country has elected a mole from Osama bin Laden's army of spies or he's too cheap to buy me a drink.
Back to Sunday night. A parade, fireworks, and an interview with the new president preceded the game, the crew of the airplane that landed in the Hudson River was trotted out, soldiers in dress habit carried flags and presented arms, confetti flew, cameras flashed, Faith Hill sang some paean to America, Jennifer Hudson warbled the national anthem, and then the military capo of the Iraq adventure, Gen. David Petraeus, came out to oversee that ritual so vital to our national security, the coin toss.
As the camera zoomed in on Petraeus's facial pores, Major Bob leaped to his feet. He began to applaud, banging his big paws together so loudly I feared the HDTV screens might fall off the wall. "Yes," he shouted, almost as a challenge. "Yes! Yes!"
And then the Steelers and the Cardinals actually played football. No lie. Buried somewhere beneath the bullshit was a game. I left the place after halftime. Bruce Springsteen, the icon of the blue-collar worker who just last week had announced that he'd made an innocent mistake in signing that big exclusive deal with the anti-union tyrants at Wal-Mart, sang "Born In The USA." You know, the song that jingoists for the last quarter century have adopted as their own despite The Boss's repeated innocent assertions that it's really a protest song. Honest.
EDIT: Benny Jay tells me The Boss sang "Born To Run" not "Born in the USA." The point still holds.
I'd had enough bullshit for one day - for another year, for that matter. If the Super Bowl is America, then consider me anti-American.
