printPiers Morgan, who is warring against a quintessential and meaningful American tradition—self-defense—has declared his affinity for another: the Superbowl.
MORGAN: “Listen, I know what this game means to America. It’s going to be a hell of a day on Sunday. I shall be glued to it, as always. I love the whole entertainment. I love the commercials. I love the football. I love the fact that it’s such a huge part of American culture. And may the best team win.”
The truth is that we foreigners do not get it—and will never get it. Also true: One can never really be an American unless one talks the talk about the game and the scene.
Oh well. Not belonging to the cool kids’ fraternity has never bothered me terribly. And at least one great American agrees about the obscenity of the whole scene.
“I don’t pay much attention to it, replied Ron Paul to a Piers Morgan question, in February of last year, during the 2012 campaign.
… the American football scene is obscene, starting with its incestuous fraternities, the rock-star status surrounding handlers and players, their pompom-waving, knickers-baring groupies, and the tantrum-prone fans who experience bare-fanged fury when their heroes let them down.
The ads are always a big point of contention. Thus, in 2012 too, Freedom Watch’s “J-Nap” (a coinage by Jack Kerwick for Judge Andrew Napolitano) struck a blow for “liberty” by calling on a middle-aged Madonna to challenge The Censor and repeat the feat of another peer, Janet Jackson. (Yes, “Libertarianism Lite” carries the day.)
The apparition the Judge wished upon us was described, in 2004 (“JANET’S SACK OF SILICONE & OTHER SYMBOLISM”), as a “sack of silicone-filled skin, awkwardly positioned on Janet Jackson’s chest. Few will forget how pop singer Justin Timberlake released The Thing from Jackson’s bustier during the Super Bowl halftime show.”
Add the effects of age and gravity to a surgically over-stuffed breast, and you end up with a veiny mass, mounted inorganically on the breastbone. Take my word: This is not something you’d want to wave about. It looks like a stretched-to-the-limits Bota Bag (also known as a wine skin), only not nearly as inviting. The photograph also captures the gaze on Justin Tinkerbelle’s girlie features. The reviewers, mostly groovy hip-hop heads, described the sequence as “a sex-charged duet.” Justin, Jackson’s partner in the “stunt,” looks as turned on as a surgeon removing a suture. The “sensuality” was, er, a bust.
Contra “J-Nap,” I was comforted to learn that a quaint Old-World, quintessentially American gentleman like Ron Paul was baffled by America’s annual football frenzy. (And is guaranteed to find the commercials as off-putting as the frenzy.)
UPDATE: I’m one of you. Hear me talk Ravens And 49ers.
The two coaches are brothers. One quarterback has been a starter for barely half a season. The sport itself is under a microscope for its violence, and the setting, New Orleans, is where the home team found itself recently caught up in a so-called bounty scandal — bounty — excuse me — scandal.
The spectacle and the game, Super Bowl XLVII, between the Ravens and 49ers, it’s all set for Sunday, with an expected worldwide audience of more than 160 million.
MORE at PBS.org. I won’t be reading this. It’s for you.