The profound, existential importance of Super Bowl LII
The previous 51 Super Bowls have been cited for all sorts of evils. Everything from violence against women by testosteronefueled men to a strain on America’s plumbing system caused by everyone in the country going to the bathroom at halftime. Not to mention excessive consumption cheese dip. And now today’s game has been labelled as “a metaphor for Trump’s America.”
Making that claim last week was a columnist in The New York Times, who backed up his contention with all sorts of important sounding stuff.
• “The Patriots perfectly embody our income-inequality era and the tax reform that President Trump recently signed,” he wrote.
• “Football, like Trumpism, likes to believe that it’s about hard-working folks in the heartland. But this year’s Super Bowl, like the Trump administration, bows to the Acela corridor,” he insisted. I have no idea where the Acela corridor is or why it’s being bowed to, but apparently that’s a reference to the game being played by teams from big-deal cities (Boston and Philadelphia) instead of small-deal cities (Minneapolis and Jacksonville.)
• Philadelphia, he declared, has fans “so famously obnoxious that after Sunday’s rout (in the NFC championship game), some of them threw beer cans at a Vikings team bus as it pulled away from the stadium. Sore winning: I wonder which of our amazing leaders taught them that.”
I’m way too politically unsophisticated to weigh in on all that, although I might point out that long before there was a Trump in the White House, Philadelphia fans were famous for throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. And linking Trump to the game seems like a bit of a stretch, even for columnists who believe that every paragraph they write, regardless of the topic, must include the name “Trump.” There’s not necessarily any reason to believe that the president will go to the game, take time out from tweeting to watch it on television or, even, be aware it exists.
But here’s what I think the Super Bowl is: It’s a football game. A reason to throw a party. An excuse for snacking on pizza, chicken wings, guacamole and assorted artery-cloggers. Creating new nibbles and drinks for “the big game” has become something of a cottage industry; an item in People magazine last week recommended a libation consisting of grapefruit juice, beer and tequila. I’d rather spend the rest of my life sober than drink that.
It is, to be sure, an overhyped, over-commercialized, frequently boring football game. Millions of Americans will watch it. Millions more will ignore it. But, whatever it may be, it has one great value. It provides three plus hours for Americans to assemble without yelling at each other about Donald Trump.