SAMMYBLUE's Cynical Mind
Politics and the World of Sports
And other observations
Pretty soon, this will occur in American life:
You, on your son’s birthday, will take a trip in your Chevrolet Lumina, pass the McDonald’s, get gas at the Exxon station, then pass the Wal-mart, on the way to watch your local professional sports team at “Fill-in-the-blank Corporation” Stadium!
It's already happened!
Doesn’t it make you swell with local pride to know that the team you support plays at Advil Stadium, or the Alka-Seltzer Dome. . .or Playstation Ballpark, or the KY Jelly Arena? Doesn’t it make you feel like a great American to know that, because our money isn’t enough to support the Professional Sports that now, our stadium names have been co-opted???
Basketball and Hockey started this disgusting trend: Chicago Stadium turned into the United Center. Boston Garden to the Fleet Center. . .The Great Western Forum into the Staples Center. Even the NFL team I support (the Bills) had a corporate name. . .Rich Stadium, named after the Rich Plan food marketing corporation <luckily, it’s now named after the owner>.
Then the NFL and MLB got involved. Great American Ballpark, Investco Stadium @ Mile High, Petco Park, PNC Park, Gillette Stadium, Reliant Stadium, Ford Field, US Cellular Park. . .when will it end???
I believe this is the first sign of the Rapture and part of the concept that individuals don’t matter. The money we pour into the big four (well, big three, since the NHL will die due to their idiocy) professional sports means NOTHING anymore. They have their corporate sponsorships, their buy-ins from Madison Aveune, their pocketbooks filled with money from people who don’t know the difference between a baseball and a basehead.
How does this deal with politics? Simple: Sports is a micro looking at the macro world around it. All you have to do is look at sports to see how America at its worst. Prized American institutions sold out to the highest bidder where the customer doesn’t care: Sports fans of other teams not speaking in rivalries, but pure hatred towards one another (Red Sox/Yankees, anyone?). The sports teams doing underhanded tactics to get the edge (steroids in baseball), like how the republicans co-opted the language, the media, the information systems and the tenor of the debate. Infighting (Pistons/Pacers) between people who are only opponents, not enemies. Absolute hatred of sports fans, mistrust of sports fans by players and teams (Pistons/Pacers and the heavy handed tactics by the rental cops in stadia to quell booing) seems like how our government looks at the voters and the American people and how our police departments deal with us (very heavy-handedly).
However, you know it will be the end of times when you watch the Las Vegas Hookers play the Omaha Racists in Henderson, NV at the Trojandome on “Free Sample Night.”
If media is a reaction to the American way of life at large, then sports is the barometer.
OTHER QUESTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS:
1: How many people believe that when George Bush says “We value the principles of this Country and freedom and democracy,” he’s not quietly laughing to himself? Does he truly want us to believe that he doesn’t say those things like a punchline to a really tasteless and horrible joke?
2: We haven’t heard from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle or any of the other PNAC neo-Conservatives in a while. Should we be nervous that they are plotting something, or thankful that they aren’t in the spotlight?
3: All during the Terry Schiavo fiasco, the talking heads on the radio said that we should tailor laws that protect the weakest in our society. That leads me to two questions: 1: Are these people making up their ideology as they go alone, and 2: Why do they not support socialized, subsidized medical care? Is it that those laws to protect the weakest in our Society apply to everyone, so long as their pocketbook is not affect? Yes, I’m looking at you, Sean Hannity!
4: Tom DeLay has been strangely quiet. Wonder if he’s just chickening out of his hardcore rhetoric because that noose is really tightening and the “blame the liberals” ploy hasn’t worked yet?
5: Bill Frist is thinking of running for President in 2008. Now, normally, I would be laughing, but given that I have very little faith in the American voter to see this snake-oil sham artist for the hypocritical opportunist he is, he might actually have a decent chance. He will carry the South. He is the type of reactionary, arrogant, homophobic, racist, bigoted good ol’ boy that those neanderthals down South really love. Wonder if Rick “frothy mix of fecal matter and lube found after anal sex” Santorum will be his running matter. To see where I got that definition of Santorum, check out
this link for the digusting truth about Santorum.
6: Heir Gropenator Arnie’s approval ratings are sinking faster than the Bismarck did after the entire royal navy was detached to sink her. Could he be a ½ governor after all?
7: The nuclear option seems to have the most tepid of support. This is great news for people who know that the Republicans did exactly the same thing to Clinton’s nominees in his eight years. 10 out of over 200 have been filibustered. That’s less than 5%. Way to whip up a holy war over nothing, lads!
8: Notice how bigoted Christianity has become. If you don’t tote the official church line, you are ex-communicated, exiled and black-listed. And notice where this mostly happens? Down South and in the Midwest. Bush control. . .the ones who say that liberals are vindictive, emotional and not open to different ideas. We actually are. . .we just argue yours and explain how wrong-minded you are. Conservatives exile, we explain. Notice the difference?
9: I wonder if Laura Bush will take her comedy show on the road? And if she does, I wonder how many porn shops and adult theaters will book her. I’m glad she gave free advertising to Chippendales. I wonder if our boy Jeff Gannon was working that night.
10: Finally. . .this week was VE day. Veterans from all over the world celebrating the end of the European phase of the worst war in human history. Bush used this time to celebrate America. . .by bashing Franklin Roosevelt? Nothing says “we love out veterans” by bashing the man who led us through the worst depression in human history, then through the worst war in human history. Nothing like using 55 million men dead to push your agenda on the world, by demonizing one of the three men who stopped the world from speaking German and Japanese for the rest of time. Way to go, George. By the way, World War II wasn’t the sequel to War of the Worlds. . .but you are the sequel to a Presidency that shouldn’t have had a sequel. Or a Presidency to be sequelized.
So, thank you for your words of kindness about VE day. Yet, you failed to mention that Grandpa Prescott had trouble in the 1940s because companies he managed were seized under the “Trading with the Enemy Act” because they were tied to Nazi Industrialist Fritz Thyssen. Nice, eh? Check out
this for the story.
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