The Poet's Eye
     commentary by Lightning Rod

The Poet's Eye is skeptical without being cynical,
innocent without being naive and critical without
being judgemental.

Super Bowl
for release 02-06-05
Washington D.C.

You can say what you want about Fox News, They may be biased whores that think that Geraldo Rivera is a representative of good journalism, but you've got to hand it to the boys at Fox for understanding what show business is about.

This is the network that gives us American Idol, The Simpsons and now, The Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is the nearest thing we have to a National Church Service. The thoroughfares of most American cities will be deserted this evening as fans gather around their wide screen TV's and the beer is chilling in the fridge and enough bean dip and chips are deployed to feed several starving African nations. The only people on the streets will be working for Dominos and Papa John's.

As we reach the stage of empire, it is only fitting that we should have bread and circuses. Fox has spared no time and expense to insure that the circus is exciting and the bread is plentiful. They are charging nearly two and a half million bucks for a thirty second ad during the game.

When I was a teenager, my uncle was a PGA tour pro. In the mid sixties he hit a hole in one in the Buick Open. They had a hole in one prize of $50,000 and a new Buick. Figuring that it takes about ten seconds to hit a hole in one, that made his rate of pay roughly two million bucks an hour. Two million bucks an hour then and five million per minute now, it gives you the idea what kind of money is involved in the religion of pro sports.

I'm feeling in a Hunter Thompson mood on this day of Saturnalia. Even though I don't have vast amounts of money riding on the outcome of the Super Bowl like Thompson probably does, I am in my cockpit with suitable beverages, chips and dips and copious smoking materials. Life is good. I'm not a regular football fan but I can feel a part of this National Ceremony. It's a great melding of our cultures of pop music and politics and athletic stardom and Hollywood and just general rich kid celebrities like Paris Hilton gone wild. It's a National Enquirer High Mass of a cultural spectacle.

I've been watching the Fox pre-game show for the past four hours. Why is everybody talking so loud? Jimmy Johnson and Terry Bradshaw are positively screaming. It's starting to remind me of professional wrestling. If pro wrestling is the holy-roller snake cult of sports religions and NASCAR is the pentecostal, then football is the Catholic Church. The Super Bowl is a national ritual.

It's been some time since I watched a Super Bowl. But all year long I have felt out of the loop because I missed Janet Jackson's heralded display of mammary flesh at half-time in Super Bowl XXXVIII. I would have liked to have seen JJ's titty, but my larger disappointment was missing a moment in history, a moment that told America that irreverence won't be tolerated. When the FCC deemed Janet's one second flash of an unauthorized bosom to be a ticketable offense, it sent a grim signal to this country. So this year I decided that The Poet's Eye was going to watch the whole spectacle, start to finish, even if I'm not that interested in what Sir Paul's titty looks like.

The first thing that struck me about the ceremony was the strong patriotic theme of the entire show. Don't get me wrong. I love the Declaration of Independence. It always brings a lump to my throat when I hear Jefferson's golden words, but when in the course of human events Fox played a reading from The Declaration recited by pop stars and athletes and politicians and millionaires while two former presidents were sitting at the anchor desk, it was just a little much.

It's only fitting that this Super Bowl should be between the Eagles (our National Bird) and the Patriots. The nationalistic slant of this year's Super Bowl ceremonies remind me of the ancient Mayans. They played football too. There were rubber trees in what we today know as Central America. The Mayans made a seven pound ball out of the latex and invented a game. This game was used to decide conflicts between city/states in those days. I think it was a much better solution than war.

At the end of the game, the captain of the winning team was honored by being sacrificed by means of decapitation with a dull stone knife weilded by the king. Ok, imagine that instead of being at Camp David choking on a pretzel, that the President was at the Super Bowl waiting to slice Tom Brady's throat and catch his blood in a pan to sacrifice to the gods.

We are not that far from blood sport. NASCAR and pro wrestling, the war in Iraq, and video games all draw from the same sanguinary well. What sells is blood and pain and sex, even if it's simulated. We love our bread and circuses.

The Poet's Eye is located between The Poet's Ears. They heard Sir Paul McCartney sing 'Live and Let Die" during the half-time show. I thought it an odd choice of songs in this time of war. Let it Be would have been more apropos. Get Back, JoJo.

 

But In This Ever Changing World In Which We Live In
Makes You Give In And Cry
Say Live And Let Die
Live And Let Die
Live And Let Die
Live And Let Die
What Does It Matter To Ya
When You Got A Job To Do
You Gotta Do It Well
You Gotta Give The Other Fellow Hell
---Sir Paul McCartney

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