So, you made me watch this bullshit
It’s a once a year ritual, a total immersion in America on display, the Super Bowl. To show how far removed I was from it, I had to purchase hardware at Radio Shack to even hook up the cable. But once I did, oh what a spectacle awaited me.
What images will linger with me the most?
Would it be Christina Aguilera yelping her way- incorrectly, natch– to the end of the National Anthem?
Perhaps the eye-popping orgy of NOTHINGNESS that was The Black Eyed Peas?
How about the exploitation of Tibetian misery to hawk Groupon?
Bad, but not bad enough.
I don’t watch TV, except on Hulu, and I never watch sports, save a few moments of the World Cup every four years. So I am largely exempt from what passes as “popular culture” as it is played out upon cable TV. I didn’t watch Bill O’ Reilly “interview” Obama, although I can’t understand why Obama couldn’t find something constructive to do instead of dodging feces from the monkey cage, but hey, whatever.
No, this is what I’ll take away from Super Bowl Sunday, the juxtaposition between this:
“George W. Bush, Laura Bush, John Madden”
And this:
Litigation threat forces Bush to cancel Swiss trip
US’s former President George Bush canceled his intended visit to Switzerland to talk in Geneva, after Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York based non-profit group and other human rights organizations threatened to bring a complaint in Switzerland under the Convention Against Torture for sanctioning torture of terrorism suspects.
There was our national shame, war criminal George Bush, his vapid wife, and just for grins, his partner in the grotesque, Condi Rice all sitting pretty in the luxury box, instead of shackled to the floor of Camp X Ray. If Bush spends out his days in some sort of Kissenger-esque American house arrest because he’s too scared of prosecution to leave, well, that will be something I suppose. It won’t be justice, and it won’t bring back those he slaughtered and tortured. It won’t teach our arrogant, ignorant country a thing about right or wrong, because of our remarkable talent at self-deception.
Because you see, George Bush is a criminal. A war criminal, if that term means anything anymore- I’ve seen scant evidence that it does. He should not be feted, lounging around with John Madden and drinking O’Douls while a bunch of lumbering freaks in tights play a game before him. While millions of people risk death for their freedom in Egypt, trying to get out from under their dictator, the closest we’ve gotten in modern times sits in a bad sport coat and looks bored. George Bush should be hounded everywhere he goes until he just finds it easier to sit in Dallas keeping a low profile, venturing out for 100k talks on the rubber chicken circuit, spewing lies to those “good ‘Mericans who don’t get nauseous at the sight of his smirking, pathetic visage.
See, you made me watch this bullshit, if only for one day a year. Was it too much to let me enjoy a margarita, some great wings and stupid ads and be done with it? Then I could chat with co-workers about “The Game” and laugh about the ad where Rosanne got flattened, and then forget all about it until next year. But no, you just had to rub my nose in just how odious our “popular culture” really is, and just how complacent to horror we’ve become.
Yes, Super Bowl Sunday was a series of images. Socialism beat capitalism on the field, and a war criminal sat warm and cozy in an insulated booth, while millions suffer from his wrecking of the economy, cold in their about to be foreclosed on houses, or shivering in the bitter desert air in Afghanistan, one of them the last man to die for a lie. Yeah, you made me watch this bullshit in some vain attempt to “fit in”.
I’ll tell ya this. I’m cool with the entire spectacle of obscene consumption, talentless hacks at half time, and our national obsession with “our” team. But I’m sorry, I can’t really stomach a man that robbed us blind, committed treason, and became the face of Ugly America to the world. But what is really galling to me is, somebody is going to tell me to “get over it”.
Tell that to her:
“child”
