. . .the milkcrate. . .

Super Bowl Kerfuffle

Even though I'm rooting for the hometown Colts in today's Super Bowl, everyone should take a few minutes to enjoy this, which, I'm sure, is the first time it's been referenced in the last two weeks. Were we ever so innocent?  In the twenty years between Chicago's trips to the Super Bowl, the landscape of American football, professional and collegiate, and attitudes towards sports in America has changed considerably in the wake of intense commodification, relentless commercialism, celebrity idolatry, and performance enhancement. Maybe the "Shuffle" is to blame. Is it the moment that started it all?

Personally, I love football, warts and all. It is a game of genuine beauty: not the way, say, the Grand Canyon is beautiful, but the way a mathematic equation is said to be beautiful through its circumscription of infinite complexity by relatively few rules. A rubric for seeing order in seeming chaos. Plus, there's something extraordinary about the somatic and strategic control required of players and coaches, especially when they are challenged to marshal those skills in concert against an antithetic opponent.

But while the game itself might be, as Dennis Hopper once exclaimed, "a ballet of bulldozers," that doesn't mean football as a socio-cultural institution is faultless. Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during halftime of the 2004 Super Bowl drove the nation to distraction. But it shouldn't be the single nanosecond of nipple we 'saw' that disconcerts us. What about the half dozen beer and 'erectile dysfunction' commercials--one featuring a farting horse that burns a woman's hair, another a dog biting a man's scrotum--that are crammed down our collective craws? What about the fact that, despite the NFL's aggressive family-friendly marketing, most Americans can barely afford to take their family to a football game, let alone to the Super Bowl, the industry's crown jewel? What about the underhand manner in which sports media entities like ESPN create stories in order to report them as 'news?' (I'm looking at you, T.O.) And what about the spectacle of generally oversized, generally undereducated, and generally African-American men hitting each other with the force of small trucks? For a more substantial read on the subject, check out William Rhoden's "Forty Million Dollar Slaves." Or, read Daniel Gross's shorter NYT piece, "The NFL's Blue-Collar Workers" (21 January), which does a good job summarizing some of these concerns, though George Will's critique of the game may be even more succinct: "It combines two of the worst things about American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings."

Like I said, though, I still enjoy watching the game at all levels. I'll watch any two teams play football. Perhaps my ability to separate good from bad is because I'm able to watch with a critical eye informed by being a former offensive lineman and a current rhetorician. I'm able to, cribbing from my wife, "hate the player, not the game."

In future posts I'd like to examine my positions on football further, because, for all its troubles, I think the game also represents much about what is good in our country. And it is this, perhaps paradoxic, intricacy between football's positive and negative sides that makes it a significant topic. Football as fact and metaphor goes far to encapsulate and explain the poltical and cultural life of America, both individually and communally. Today just seemed an appropriate day to introduce the subject.

Tom Vilsack

Today my wife and I had the opportunity to sit in on a taping of "Texas Monthly Talks," an extended interview show produced by the local PBS affiliate, where the guest was former Iowa governor, and current Democratic presidential candidate Tom Vilsack. This post is not an endorsement of Vilsack; since some people still have their holiday lights up from '06, it's probably too early in the '08 race to start placing bets. But he was pragmatic and articulate, and I think a handful of his comments are worth relaying. (Of course, if you're in Texas, you can always watch him for yourself, check local listings and all that.)

If you don't know who Tom Vilsack is, you're not alone. This short article from "The Des Moines Register" (1 February) cites a poll where 81 percent of respondents "hadn't heard enough" about him. But during the interview, Vilsack claimed he isn't concerned about being overshadowed, in either notoriety or finances, by presumptive Democratic primary favorites Clinton and Obama, despite their, apparently non-meteoric, first-name-only cachet. Vilsack called himself "electable," offering what he considers a successful track record of accountability and assistance as governor in a Republican-controlled state. * I'll let you peruse his record for yourself, most of it focused on ethanol and healthcare access. He asserted his capability to win-over marginally red states like Ohio, especially given the potential challenges facing Clinton and Obama when they dive into 'middle America' to ask for votes.

The above article, however, suggests that he may be overstating things a bit. Perhaps those poll numbers are simply a function of a still-pullulating POTUS08 election slate, but they may also be harbingers of the fact that, without more money **, Vilsack's days may be numbered. Plus, as the hometown hero playing on his hometurf, it should be safe to assume that he will get a substantial boost in cashflow and media coverage coming out of next year's Iowa caucus, except for the fact that electorate-rich states like California (55), Florida (27), Illinois (21), and even Texas (34), are contemplating--trust me, it's a done deal--plans to leapfrog Iowa (7) and New Hampshire (4) on the primary calendar. If that happens, it will be a de facto nationwide primary election day, where all the money's spent, and all the dark horses taken behind the barn, before mid-February. We can discuss in the comments whether or not a single primary day is a good thing, though after the interview I asked him why it benefits Iowans in particular, and Americans in general, to have 'small' states host the country's first primaries. I found his answer responsible, though ultimately I'm unsure if I'm persauded: because of the geographic and population size of large states, he postulated, candidates cannot genuinely and intimately interface with the people in order to deliver their campaign messages. They can't "get into church basements." What you see candidates do in Iowa, what you hear them say to Iowans is, Vilsack suggested, an accurate portrait of who they are and where they stand.

Certainly Vilsack has some good things to say. The bulk of his interview, and the subsequent Q&A, was focused, unsurprisingly, on Iraq. Again, I'll let you judge for yourself whether or not his call for immediate withdrawal of American soldiers, forcing Iraqi self-governance to sink or swim, is appropriate, but his response to a question about his lack of geopolitical experience, and Beltway experience in general, is worth repeating: experience is not essential. What's required, he asserted is "judgment." As I understand him, being president is a job that no one is ever really experienced enough to take on, but that there are definite characteristics that help someone do the job more effectively, intelligently, and compassionately. Making circumspect decisions based on rational analysis of multiple sources of input--wink and nudge--is crucial, he said. Unsurprisingly, but perhaps rightly, Vilsack does not think that Washington is making good decisions for its constituency these days (by which, one assumes, he means before November '06): post-9/11 legislation is rooted in "fear," resulting in policies which ask people to turn "inward" for self-realized, self-maintained security and survival, instead of turning outward toward collective solutions. He may not go the distance, but that one comment articulated, for me at least, an understanding of the indispensable need to hybridize pathos and pragmatism in policymaking.
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* It was Republican controlled while he was governor, but flipped Democratic last November.

** If the article asks for a login and password, use Bug Me Not to bypass the process. Works for most nonpay sites, esp. online newspapers.