Super Bowl Ennui Redux

Note—My annual Super Bowl post and rant updated for this year’s event.

Sometime I feel like a secular Jew on Christmas when Super Bowl Sunday rolls around.  I don’t begrudge every one having a good time.  I know the songs and will sing along.  I might even put up a tree for the kids.  But my heart really isn’t in it.

Lest you think I am one of those effete snobs who disdain sports and mocks popular culture while pretending only to be interested obscure novels by lesbian hunch backs or festivals of avant-garde Montenegrin mid-century documentaries, I like baseball, hillbilly music, and the classic American sit-com.  And attractive women in all of their pulchritude.  I have hair on my chest, fire in the belly, and an occasional embarrassing stirring in my loins.

But I long ago lost what little interest I ever had in professional football.  Most years I can barely tell you who is playing in the Big Game unless the Chicago Bears are in it—and this year the pumicing Monsters of the Midway lost the chance to play when an errant last seconds field goal  attempt bounced off the upright.  I can’t avoid the Bears.  They are the home team and on Sunday nights at the gas station where I used to work guys would wander in various kinds of league approved apparel and expect me to engage in semi-knowledgeable conversation about the game.  I learned to peek at the TV sports on my way out the door to check the score and maybe note one big play.

As cultural traditions go, the Super Bowl does not have an ancient pedigree, but in an astonishing few years it became a great American feast and festival day—the only one associated with neither a religious or secular holiday.  Only Thanksgiving is celebrated with more gatherings public and private followed at some distance by Christmas and further back yet by the summer cook-out occasions. 

In terms of economic impact it ranks well behind Christmas and hot on the tail of Thanksgiving and Halloween but greater than such gift giving occasions as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, and pitiful bring-up-the-rear Father’s Day.  Among those cashing in on consumer spending are beer and spirits vendors, groceries and caterers, bars and restaurants, and providers of team apparel and licensed products. 

A few years ago sales of large flat screen High Definition (HD) television sets  spiked sharply right before game day, although now that they have become ubiquitous in most homes, that trend tapered off.  In addition advertising and promotional income surges for broadcasters and even hard-pressed print media.  The economies of the host city and state are boosted as tens of thousands of visitors flood local hotels and entertainment spots for events that stretch out more than a week.

We are talking about a big frigin’ deal.  The origins were more humble.  

The first NFL Championship game, retroactively named Super Bowl I, between the Greenbay Packers and Kansas City Chiefs was played with many empty seats in the stands.

After reaching an agreement to fully merge the long-established National Football League (NFL) and the upstart American Football League (AFL) representative teams began to meet for an inter-league championship game in January of 1967.  The first two games were utterly dominated by the traditional NFL powerhouse Green Bay Packers led by the game’s most iconic coach, Vince Lombardi.  Held on neutral fields, both games had trouble attracting ticket buyers and the games were played in stadiums with lots of empty seats.  The early games failed to attract many TV viewers outside the markets of the contending teams largely because the older NFL was viewed as perpetually superior to the juvenile AFL.

At first simply called the NFL-AFL Championship Game, the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, William Alexander is credited with coining the name Super Bowl by marring the established use of the word bowl for college post season games with super, inspired by his children’s latest fad toy, the Super Ball.  The name caught on with the press before the second game in 1968. Reluctant owners finally agreed to make it the official name for the game in an attempt to hype interest in their floundering event.

Super Bowl III was the first to officially use the name and the first to use Roman Numerals. I and II were retroactively applied to the first two championships.  It is doubtful that that any one looked into the distant future when Super Bowl logos would sometimes feature long strings of letters unfathomable to most Americans since Roman Numerals are now hardly taught in schools.

When the underdog AFC New York Jets led by Broadway Joe Namath won Super Bowl II it put the game on the map.

Any way, it was not the numerals but the victory of the AFC New York Jets led by brash and flashy quarterback Broadway Joe Namath that really established the game in the public mind.  AFL teams were now competitive.

Not directly related to the game, the premier of Monday Night Football on ABC TV ushered in an era when football eclipsed baseball in popularity and became hailed as America’s Game with all of the macho and vaguely jingoistic swagger that the title inferred.

In the early years the Super Bowl was treated pretty much like any other game.  The half time entertainment was not much more elaborate than a major college games and featured acts like Up With People and performances were often not shown in their entirety to make room for chatter and game analyses by the announcers.  The National Anthem was likely to be performed by a college or military band or sung third tier performers like Anita Bryant.

I was personally unaware of all of these developments.  I don’t remember seeing that first championship game because I worked Sunday afternoons washing dishes at a Howard Johnson’s in Skokie.  I graduated high school that spring and for the next several years was either away at college or was making my way in Chicago as a cultural hippy and a radical activist.  I seldom had a TV set and my social circles were not much interested in pro football.

It wasn’t until 1974 that I attended my first Super Bowl party.  I was invited by a drinking buddy to come to an event in an apartment on the edge of Old Town attended mostly by off-duty bartenders and pub waitresses.  I was astonished to find the second floor flat jammed with scores of folks; a full size keg in a tub in the kitchen; a sideboard groaning under a huge collection of whisky, vodka, bandy, and wine bottles; pots of bubbling chili; and platters full of cold cuts, cheese, and bread.  Some folks jammed around the one color TV set in the living room to watch the Miami Dolphins stomp the Minnesota Vikings, but others milled around the other rooms drinking, eating, passing joints, and making passes at each other.  The Super Bowl Party was already an established tradition.

Over the next several years I occasionally tagged along with friends to other parties.  Hell I was always up for a good party, even if the game itself was mystery to me.

By the 1980’s when I had gotten married and moved to the boonies of McHenry County the playoff format had expanded and League officials began trying to lure younger audiences with big name acts both for the Anthem and the half time shows.  TV began adding hours of pre-game programing, and advertisers began showing off special commercials made just for the big game, like IBM’s famous take-off on Charlie Chaplain’s Modern Times.

 

The 1991 game played during the Gulf War featured the first ever military fly-over at the game and Whitney Houston's pop diva take on the Star Spangled Banner.  It wedded the game to hyper patriotism and chest-thumping military swagger.

In 1991 with the Gulf War on the game became a pageant of patriotism with for the first time a flyover by military jets, an all-services Color Guard, and Whitney Houston’s famous rendition of the Anthem.  After that there was no turning back.  The military became a fixture as did the custom of inviting divas and pop superstars.  The U.S. Army even became one of the game’s regular sponsors.

After the September 11th attack and during the Iraq and Afghan Wars the confabulation of the game with the military and hyper patriotism intensified.  The singing of God Bless America was added to the pre-game pageantry alongside the Anthem.

I sometimes went to a party—my brother in law used to host one.  But except for Super Bowl XX when the Chicago Bears won I had next to no interest in the games themselves.

When the home team Chicago Bears led by Mike Ditka won Super Bowl  XX it got even my  attention.

During those years Super Bowl Sunday really became an all-purpose spectacle.  In addition to the high voltage entertainment, watching and rating the parade of clever new advertising became a major attraction.  So did stunts like the Bud Bowl, Puppy Bowl, and Lingerie Bowl as well as counter programing on other networks provide entertainment even for those not interested in the game.

This year in Super Bowl LIII—that’s 53 to the Latin illiterate—the Los Angeles Ram are playing perennial powerhouse the New England Patriots.  Outside the environs of the Hub of the Universe, New England is despised because Quarterback Tom Brady former Deflategate scandal and suspicion of arrogance.  Bill Belichick is in his record breaking 9th appearance as Head Coach with five wins is widely reviled as a cheater. 

The game is roiled by a number of controversies especially the notorious blown pass interference call  that could have sent the New Orleans Saints to the big game.  Press and public outrage has resulted the NFL and its Commissioner Roger Goodell eating humble pie but declining to do anything to change the ruling.  Federal Courts turned down a fan-led suit to order that the game be replayed.

San Francisco 49ers Eric Reid and quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem before a game against the Los Angeles Rams in 2015 setting the stage for a two year drama over Taking a Knee to protest police shooting of Blacks that continues to haunt this year's game.

The long-running Take a Knee controversy that began with San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick protesting police brutality and shootings of a string of unarmed Blacks knelt during the National Anthem.  The movement spread with players across the League taking a knee in solidarity.  President Donald Trump playing to his base unleashed several Twitter storms berating Kaepernick, protesting players, and the NFL for allowing the alleged “disrespect to the Flag.”  Kaepernick remains effectively blackballed by League owners and has not played since the 2016 season.

His supporters urged mega-stars to boycott performances at this year’s game.  Several artists, including Jay-Z, Rihanna, and Cardi B, reportedly turned down offers to do the half-time show and the League had to scramble to sign a headliner.  Finally white  pop rockers Maroon Five fronted by Adam Levine agreed to perform and were greeted by torrent of social media backlash.

Pop rock Maroon 5 fronted by Adam Levine will headline this year's half time show in Atlanta despite protests and backlash on social media.

The League also had no luck getting a hot super-star with youth appeal to sing the National Anthem. 74-year-old Gladys Knight will do the honors in her hometown of Atlanta.

On Tuesday January 29, NFL cancelled the traditional press conference for the halftime show to head off embarrassing and pointed questions.

All that might turn out to be mildly interesting.  But  my wife and I will be dining out with new grandson-in-law Paul Carlson and his bride Caiti at kickoff at a place with no TV in the dining room.   Ask me if I have a pick in the game itself, and I would frankly have to answer, “I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

Annual Rant More Apt Than Ever—Why the Martin Luther King Holiday Pisses Me Off

Note:  I have posted this in one form or another on or around the Martin Luther King Day Federal Holiday for about nine years.  Long time readers may be sick of it.  Some of those who were offended in earlier rounds have left the building in a huff—or come to see that maybe it was not so far off the mark after all.  The thing is, year by year, it becomes more relevant. 

Today is the Federal Holiday celebrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and this year manages to fall on his actual birthday.

He was born on January 15, 1929 and was assasinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.  It was a long, hard fought effort to create a federal holiday, following proclamations in several states.  President Ronald Reagan signed the legislation creating the holiday in 1983 and it was first celebrated nationally in 1986.  The senior George Bush moved the date to the third Monday in January. 

Despite the national observance, several states refused to enact state proclamations. After a national economic boycott threatened the Super Bowl in Arizona, the holiday was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.

Depending on your state, schools may or may not be open.  It they are you can count on some kind of touchy-feely programming that will assure children that once, long, long ago things weren’t so nice for Black people, but thanks to Dr. King everything is just fine now.  A tremendous amount of time will be spent emphasizing his non-violence and schools now routinely use the occasion as a center piece in their violence prevention programs.  They will also emphasize tolerance of those who are different—which it turns out may be the red-headed kid or the girl with a lisp. 

As laudable as these things are, children are not apt to be told that their grandparents may just have been the ones doing the oppression of Black folk.  Nor are they given any real sense of Dr. King as a truly revolutionary figure willfully defying the power of the state, demanding true systematic change, addressing class inequality, and in time of war leading an opposition to that war.

A lot of events today will look like this one in my neck of the woods--an overwhelmingly white neck, I might add. A group rendition of We Shall Overcome at  the end of the 28th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prayer breakfast at Elgin Community College in 2015. I was attending a clone event in Crystal Lake.

In cities, towns, and villages across much of the country, there will be obligatory civic observations.  These most often take the form of prayer breakfasts, dutifully attended by local dignitaries of all races.  While some local Black preacher may take the occasion to lay out some harsh truths or even demand attention to continuing injustices, everybody will applaud politely.  Politicians will parade to the podium with bromides.  Someone—preferably the precocious son of a Black preacher—will intone words from the I Have a Dream Speech, and at the end maybe everyone will join hands and sing We Shall Over Come.  I bet you have been to just this kind of event.  Hell, I’ve even helped plan and put them on.

There will be nostalgic clips of the March on Washington on the news, maybe a documentary or two on Public Television.

Many of the people who hated Dr. King when he was alive or who are their spiritual descendants will blandly join in the celebrations.  And then they will turn his words against him.  When you hear a plump politico with a honeyed accent quote, as they all love to do, the one phrase from the I Have a Dream speech where he spoke about the little children being judged not on the color of their skins but on the strength of their characters, watch out.  That hack is about to use Dr. King's words to attack that dream.  He will say that now that we have erased statutory discrimination, any lingering program that gives disadvantaged minorities the slightest leg-up is itself discriminatory.  He will claim that Dr. King would want a perfectly color blind society.  Unspoken is his deep conviction that in such a color blind society, white men will rise like cream and be restored to their rightful place on top of the ladder—as if they had ever really lost it.

Dr. King will also be lauded for his non-violence, which will be translated into passivity.  Law breaking—including the kind the Civil Rights Movement routinely used—will be denounced.  No word will be uttered that Dr. King’s non-violence actually expected to provoke violent opposition and use that response to tweak the conscience of a democratic nation. 

Since Dr. King’s time, police departments have been provided with new arms and tactics.  New crowd control methods and security provisions make the kind of marches, sit-ins, and demonstrations led by King either difficult or kept far away from threatening the safety of those being protested, as was seen repeatedly in attacks on the Occupy Movement, Black Lives Matter protests, and at Standing Rock. New restrictions on the press—and when that doesn’t work outright attacks, arrests, and physical intimidation—keeps reporters from fully reporting on acts of civil disobedience so that the public consciousness may be safely left un-tweaked.

A few of years ago, rising to a new level of audacious gall, a senior Pentagon official, in a program marking Dr. King’s birth at the Department of Defense, actually argued that the Nobel Peace Prize winner would understand and approve of the work of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We are told that because Dr. King was a faithful Baptist, he would not today support Gay, lesbian, and transgendered people and that it is a mockery to compare their struggle to the Civil Rights Movement.  The Black church is divided on this—even Dr. King’s children are—but it is hard to imagine his rejection of justice for them.

Likewise some Black leaders will claim, especially in their own communities, that Dr. King fought just for them, that gains he fought for should not be extended to the growing Latino minorities that threaten to displace them as the most oppressed.

It is telling that this New Yorker cover was considered scandelous and offensive by some--mostly those who have spent decades trying to mute and sanatize his message. 

All of this is possible because nearly 50 years after his death Martin Luther King has been sanitized.  He has been scrubbed clean of the any semblance of actual humanity, any personal foibles or flaws, and midnight doubts or struggles of the soul.  He has become an empty vessel into which can be poured a safe and bland pudding which can placate pesky Blacks with a pat-on-the-head while protecting the status-quo.

Enough!  The real, flesh and blood Dr. King would have none of it. 

Let’s remember him today for who he was, not who the charlatans want to make him out to be.  And let’s remember that as great as he was, he was one man.  Let’s not denigrate the truly historic sacrifices of thousands and thousands of ordinary people who repeatedly literally put their lives on the line—and continue to do so today.  Let’s celebrate him and them by rededicating ourselves to standing up as they did, by putting our bodies, when necessary, on the line to achieve his true dream of an equitable and just society.

And let’s embrace the new generation of committed and imaginative young Black leaders who are making sure America learns that Black Lives Matter!