Posted on 02/07/2011 9:06:32 PM PST by dead
The 2011 Super Bowl was between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers—two squads whose monikers speak to their roots as factory teams in the industrial heartland. As these teams prepared to face off in the almighty spectacle that is the Super Bowl, the game’s pre-game show involved a salute to Ronald Reagan on his hundredth birthday. Considering how Reagan gutted the aforementioned industrial heartland, a more appropriate pre-game show would have been an intimate meeting at the fifty-yard line between a Reagan-disguised tackling dummy and fearsome Steeler James Harrison. (The Black Eyed Peas at halftime, however, made me long for another Reagan tribute.) It was also, by the way, Bob Marley’s birthday, and I’m going to guess that far more Super Bowl parties in this country reflected Marley’s legacy than Reagan’s.
But it wasn’t just the film tribute that reminded viewers of the Reagan 1980s. The sheer tonnage of militaristic bombast with patriotic trimmings was like Top Gun on steroids and may have seemed over the top to the Gipper himself. Viewers were treated to a reading of the Declaration of Independence, coupled with Marines marching on the field, coupled with that twit from Glee singing “America the Beautiful,” coupled with more shots of the troops, coupled with a damaged Christina Aguilera stumbling through the National Anthem. By the time it was done, I was ready to get an American Flag tattoo and send my taxes to Hosni Mubarak like a Fox-Approved Good American. But fortunately for my sanity, I was watching the game with the DC Chapter of Iraq Veterans Against War at their annual Demilitarized Super Bowl Party. The vets, who booed every time Fox tried to use the troops to build its brand, made it clear that real war in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t have a damn thing to do with what the broadcast was selling. As Geoff Millard of Iraq Vets Against the War said to me, “We love sports but hate the way it’s used and hate the way the soldiers are used to sell war.”
And yet somewhere amidst the noise, the smoke, the Reagans and the Black Eyed Peas, a football game actually broke out, and it was a dandy. In every previous Super Bowl, no team had ever come back from more than a ten-point deficit, and before you could blink, the Steelers were down 18, 21-3. This was thanks to two costly interceptions by Pittsburgh quarterback and twice-accused rapist Ben Roethlisberger. An electric interception return for a touchdown by Green Bay safety Nick Collins reminded a lot of us why we love this game in the first place. But Pittsburgh is a team with two dozen players who were part of their Super Bowl championship team two years ago and they refused to quit. The game wound down with Green Bay leading 31-25 and Pittsburgh having the ball with just two minutes to play. Green Bay’s defense held and a fantastic game ended as the Pack came away with the win. Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers was absolutely brilliant completing 24-of-39 passes for 304 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions and winning the MVP.
Yet for all the celebration of the Packers and their history, there was one brazen decision made by the show’s producers and announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman that was an insult to everything the team stands for. Often, the Super Bowl includes numerous shots of the two teams’ owners fretting in their luxury boxes like neurotic Julius Caesars. But the Packers are a team without an owner. They’re a community-run nonprofit owned by 112,000 fans. Rather than celebrate that fact, Fox didn’t mention the Pack’s unique ownership structure once. They also then didn’t include shots of the Rooney family, the most celebrated ownership family in the NFL.
After the game, during the traditional passing of the Lombardi Trophy to the winning team’s owner, the award was handed to the Packers’ “CEO and Chief Executive Officer” Mike Murphy, who barely looks old enough to shave. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, as he threatens to lock the players out, clearly wants to hide the truth that the Packers have no single billionaire owner. They want it hidden because the team from Green Bay stand as a living breathing example that if you take the profit motive out of sports, you can get more than a team to be proud of: you get a Super Bowl Champion. It aint Tahrir Square, but it’s something, in our over-corporatized, hyper-commercialized sports world, to cheer. That is reason enough to celebrate the fact that the Lombardi Trophy has finally come home to Titletown.
LOL! Liberals are such goofballs. Can you imagine the meeting between Goodell and Fox?
"We can't let the people know that the Packers aren't owned by a single billionaire! It would be a disaster for our gravy train, for reasons that are difficult to decipher outside of the mind of a scatterbrained leftwing sportswriter!"
It's the logic of a mental patient. Kinda funny though.
I guess the Packers are the southpaw great white hope for socialism in sports, or something like that.
Cheesehead Nation...
Anybody know what this moron is talking about?
Wiki
Career
Zirin’s column, Edge of Sports, appears on Sports Illustrated’s website and he is the host of XM satellite’s weekly show, Edge of Sports Radio. Zirin is a frequent contributor to The Nation, a columnist for SLAM Magazine, and The Progressive, as well as being a frequent guest on ESPN’s Outside The Lines and Democracy Now.
His first book, What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books) has entered its third printing.[1][2]
Zirin has also published Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports, and “A People’s History of Sports in the United States,” a sports-related volume in the manner of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States series for The New Press.
In addition to “What’s My Name, Fool?” for Haymarket Books, he has also published “The Muhammad Ali Handbook” for MQ Publications. Zirin is also the published children’s book author of “My Name is Erica Montoya de la Cruz” (RC Owen). In addition, he is working on a sports documentary with Barbara Kopple’s Cabin Creek films on sports and social movements in the United States.
[edit]Controversies
[edit]Calls for political boycott
Zirin has repeatedly called for sports boycotts on certain players, teams, states, or nations for non sports related, political reasons.
On April 27, 2010, writing for the Guardian, Zirin called for a boycott against sports teams from Arizona, in particular the Diamondbacks, to protest the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act — aka S.B. 1070 or the Arizona immigration bill.[3][4] He did however express tremendous enthusiasm and support during the 2010 NBA Playoffs for the Phoenix Suns, who went by “Los Suns” as a statement against the Arizona immigration law.
On June 2, 2010, writing for the Nation, Zirin justified the decision of the Turkish U-19 soccer team to boycott a match against Israel. He described the Gaza flotilla raid as an act of state terror committed by the Israeli government and proposed a boycott of Israel.[5]
Who won the Puppy Bowl? I can’t find it anywhere!!!
I may be the only guy on the planet that doesn’t give a monkey s**t about the pregame or halftime or the ads or the postgame. Zirin is just one of thousands of “notice me!” overwrought “journalists” acting stupidly. I turned off my Pandora radio blues channel and switched to the game just after that glittering jewel of intellect Christine A finally screeched out the end of the anthem and a football game appeared..........
Uh, as long as we're on the subject of dealing in reality, can you tell us how many Super Bowl wins that it takes before you're finally satisfied that an NFL team has "won lots of Super Bowls", please?
Going against unions helps industry you twit.
“Considering how Reagan gutted the aforementioned industrial heartland”
The term “Rustbelt” came along during CARTER, to describe the rusting, outforced factories and brownfields created by the strikes and over-unionization of the 70’s, and the 70’s environmental regulations.
They say misery loves company, what a bunch of losers, all three of them.
Yes, y’all did and what a fine job that was.Keep up the great work.Nice job working over the steelers BTW.
“They want it hidden because the team from Green Bay stand as a living breathing example that if you take the profit motive out of sports, you can get more than a team to be proud of: you get a Super Bowl Champion.”
Because the owner is corporate that does not mean their is no profit motive. Every Player, coach, and staff member goes there for profit.
The pit bulls, 58 - 6.
Hell, I thought that was a joke.
Oh, now THIS is real sports analysis. I don't guess the years of double digit inflation were a factor. Or Carter handing most of the scarce loan guarantees he would allow to Wisconsin Steel (a Chicago company who shortly thereafter went bankrupt when their major customer went on strike) was a factor. Or Carter refusing any import restrictions or tariffs like those Reagan imposed in '84 was a factor.
That the fans own the Packers is no different than shareholders owning anything else so shareholders part of the evil capitalist system as well. They must be, because the ever benevolent Barry shafted anyone holding GM shares in the interest of outright fascist control. So, there goes that convienent lying socialist line crap. Maybe the state will decide it should own the Packers and can make a nice deal with the current owners the same way.
But it is good to have a team situation that can be distorted into helping spread the propaganda and create opportunities for fearless media volk to teach the masses socialism.
Regards
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