That Weren't No Hallmarkville Last Night

I often pass on Super Bowls. Unless one my local teams – Redskins, Vikings, Seahawks -- or their arch-rivals -- Eagles, Packers, Forty-niners – are involved. Has Minnesota heard from Denmark or Norway yet, complaining about cultural appropriation? Whatever. 

I normally avoid this amalgam of NFL owners’ collective bad taste and Hollywood hoopla but this year I was curious to see if Patrick Mahomes would have his ears pinned back. (Barbara, a friend’s wife, adores Mahomes and tags him “cute” though how a 6’2’’, 225 pound, multi-millionaire, commanding, hunk can be “cute” escapes me.)

And did his ears ever get pinned back! by those 6’5”, 300-pound defensive Vandals bestowing their brotherly love all over the Big Easy. The Big Easy: that city of not-so-sisterly love. In Spring of 1967, my (then) wife and I were having brunch at The Court of the Two Sisters when the GM and newly hired Coach of the newly formed Saints franchise came in --followed by local news cameras. A nearby foursome we had noticed earlier, two middle-aged gents and two hot young babes, jumped to their feet and rushed away leaving their brunch nearly untouched. “What was that about” my wife wondered. “Two Iowans who are supposed to be working the American Nuts and Bolts Convention don’t want to be seen back home on TV”, I ventured.

 I watched last night’s first half and then shut it off before “The Half-Time Show!” That wretched  “show” has become a bigger deal than the game, itself.

What I saw in the commercials and promotions disturbed me, in all seriousness. A few years ago, I gave a speech on “the Coarsening of America.” Then it was cage fighting on CBS and women bearing vulgar messages across their t-shirts and using the f-word and double-entendre jokes in family fare. It’s only gotten worse and is now coupled with rejection of experts, science, and elites. Many, not all, but many of last night's commercials and promotions were not merely in bad taste but portrayed a testosterone-laced machismo of in-your-face aggressiveness, even from women presenters. One commercial featured murderous gladiators and blood-thirsty Colosseum fans, an open invitation to draw a comparison with Caesars Superdome. Reading this morning’s reviews, apparently the rap-attack half-time show was much of the same.

Don’t we need less testosterone, not more; less macho aggression and more politeness, more empathy, more “niceness” of the British Columbia and Minnesota sort? Maybe this makes me sound like a wimpish snob, but I value good taste and refinement, don’t you?