This weekend, like many people, I was at a Super Bowl party at a friend's place. It was a good mix of almost 30 people. Well, there were men and women, but no kids though since it was a young crowd. I work with four of them and am friends with another ten of them. I know quite a bit about the politics of those people, but the rest I have no idea. And I really didn't care to learn about it on that day. (Of those I do know though, it was a fairly even 3-way split between conservative, liberal, and moderate.)
Let me backtrack a little. There are three things I can talk about all day (and sometimes do): economics, foreign policy to Iran, and football. Since college, I've always been into finance, investing, and macro economics. During the tech boom, I thought about becoming a financial advisor (at that time, I did computational linguistic work). About a year or two ago, on a visit to our nation's capital with a nominally anti-war group, I met somebody who got me involved in Iran issues. I was with him and a few others in a hotel for months, and he taught me to read and speak a little Persian (now it only takes me 30 minutes to read a news clip, instead of 2 hours). My current (and an ex-) girlfriend has ties with Iran too, being Persian. These are both recent issues for me, within the last 7 or so years.
Football, however, I've loved since I was a kid. I played baseball and basketball too, but I really loved football. Pop Warner to high school, I loved it. I can't rattle off statistics, but I can sit down and explain what a Cover 2 shell is, the difference a bubble screen and a traditional screen, and even go back to the Wing-T and its siblings if somebody is curious about early football formations. If anybody here ever read my K5 diary, I posted entries picking apart certain play from that week, or answering questions people asked me about terminilogy or even things from the ESPN show Playmakers. I even have a bookshelf of college coaching association articles that I get a friends to send me.
Football has all the parts of what is great about America, and the Super Bowl allows us all to gather and leave our ideological difference behind. Even though the half-time show was terrible (will people please stop paying Kid Rock to do whatever it is that he does), when somebody tried to change the channel to CNN to see the MoveOn ad, a loud "No!" yelled from about ten people in unison from the kitchen was the response. These were people not even watching the show at the time, but they all knew that nobody wanted to inject something so political into the evening. Whoever at MoveOn decided it would be good to show the commercial during the Super Bowl and all those who sit here and complain about CBS not showing it are clearly not football fans. They enjoy creating disharmony whenever possible and were willing to take a great traditional and bend it to their own ideological goals.
I'm glad CBS gave MoveOn the middle finger. I still cannot understand all the complaining by people either.
In what other sport have grown men cried after even a regular season game, win or lose? Every year it happens in football, and the big playoff games really get the tears flowing. There is something emotionally draining about the game. The great physical stress, greater than any other sport, turns into emotional ourburst. Players put in all their effort, even though few will ever reach the top. There is no guaranteed equality, and like American life, there isn't even guaranteed fairness. Sometimes a win or loss comes down to a blown call or a bad bounce. But nobody tries any less, it means that you just need to work harder to insulate yourself from bad luck. If the game was close enough to be swung by that call, then you weren't playing well enough. Americans don't expect equality of results, and we don't want it. This shows in our electorate's resistent to nanny state programs, only opting for them as a last resort when politicians overregulate sections of the economy into destruction. It is unsurprising that calls for quasi-nationalizing health care are getting louder. The whole section is burdened by such heavy regulation that nationalization might actually reduce the regulatory load.
America also loves a winner, but more than that we love our underdogs. The underdog represents a little of that luck and a lot of hard work and talent. We love to see that 20 point underdog will themselves to a win. We see the great competition, and we love it. We like it when businesses grow some small family ventures into large producers, knocking off the top dog. And we love it when the next company comes and does it to them. We don't like being told that we can't. That message comes from some politicians, and it isn't a winning message. There is a new one of those freedom commercials being played that has an old lady speaking, and one of the lines she says is "if you put your mind to it, you can do anything in this country." We eat that stuff up, because for the most part, it is true. It may not happen on your first attempt, but many of those who keep plugging away -- being stopped at the goal line on their first three attempts -- will finally make it -- the proverbial 4th and inches '21 dive'.
We know that on the field, great competitors get angry. They hit more brutally, run faster, and try harder. Football is said to be controlled anger. When you get on that field, if you are a lineman, you want to be mad at the guy on the other side of the line. However, when the game is over, it is all left on the field. You have a job to do and you do it, just as your opponent does. Off the fiend, there is a mutual respect for competitors who were foes. When you were decleated or blind-sided by the crack back, you got angry and tried to blow the man up the next play. But when the game is over, you squash it. It was the adrenaline and survival insticts.
Why can't MoveOn learn that lesson? Off the field of politics, you let it go. During a day when people come together, why try to intentionally create discord?
