Printer-friendly version »

Patriot Games

The unholy alliance between the USA and the NFL keeps Americans stupid.

by B.D. | 2004.09.16

Last Sunday, when the NFL season kicked off in earnest (we’re not counting the preceding Thursday’s chicanery), viewers of the unanticipated showdown between the New York Jets and the Cincinnati Bengals received a Goebbelsesque array of patriotic imagery. Even before the ceremonial coin toss was thumbed into the midday September sky, we were treated to a 40-yard wide American flag, the national anthem, a dedication to the victims of 9-11, words of support for our nation’s servicemen slain overseas and a fleet of military helicopters whirling overhead. The obvious question here: what the fuck?

No one sings “God Bless America” to introduce the morning coffee in their cubicle. No one starts dinner with a 21-gun salute. No one rents Mean Girls and expects Lindsay Lohan’s titties to be preempted by a “amber waves of grain” refrain. In fact, the last time you droned the Pledge of Allegiance was probably as an impressionable little snot under the watchful eye of a cigarette-breathed schoolmarm. Yet every Sunday, stadiums packed with beer-swilling adults and countless millions of television viewers happily endure pure unadulterated patriotic propaganda.

Why is the sporting world such a natural fit for nationalism? It could be that men engaging in feats of athletic valor are surrogates for some innate craving for conflict and war. Think of the vocabulary: “the Eagles really killed the Giants last week” or “the Eagles really gang-raped the homo Giants last week” or “the Eagles really ripped the Giants’ entrails from their gushing midsections, burned them while the Giants writhed and eventually beat the Giants to death with sharpened shards of feldspar”. It’s as aggressive as Dame Dash on a fifth of Army. In both violence and strategy, football is far and away the most militaristic of popular contemporary sports. Flubber-lipped announcer John Madden has trouble blurting six sentences without a reference to war, warriors and battles in the trenches. Granted, he’s a gurgling idiot. But still.

It’s an worldwide thing. Those British soccer hooligans renowned for gouging eyeballs will fight for their city’s club team just as quickly as they’ll journey to Portugal to cut throats in the name of the Queen. And plenty of those Limey thugs are members of the National Front, a racist right-wing political party. Even the Olympic Games, so often hailed as a unifying force, is little more than an unabashed merging of athletics and jingoism. Remember Hitler in the balcony, angrily scarfing down corndogs as he watched Jesse Owens urinate on his beloved Aryans sprinters? Shit was illmatic.

As far as the American version of football is concerned, take a quick look at the state where glazed-eyed yokels proclaim, “football is king”. Right, Texas. Other places where lobbing around the pigskin is practically a religious practice include Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Ohio. Beyond being electoral red states, these places are uninhabitable territories of crapulence. Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania could be included here, but we’re not trying for objectivity. We’re making a point. And it’s probably football’s fault that the Keystone State is a swinger this time around.

Besides the constant war themes, why is football so much worse than other sports as a brainwashing device? We’ll happily speculate. The normal American's schedule calls for 40 hours of work from Monday to Friday, a routine that leaves but two days for not only family activities, but also for escaping the drudgery of the previous five days. Unlike other sports, which are scattered across the week, football insidiously gives structure to the only time that most people have the opportunity to decide for themselves what to do and when to do it. The NCAA and the NFL make it easy – wake up, watch pre-game, watch game one, watch game two, eat dinner, go to sleep. Now go back to work.

It wouldn’t as negative an agenda if people were out at a local pub socializing with friends, cohorts and squinty-eyed colleagues. But the increasing popularity of DirecTV and its NFL package indicate more and more fans are watching football not in rip-roaring dens of decadence, but in their own living room. And since each NFL game is equivalent to 1/16th of a season, for many followers, missing a single contest -- or leaving the comfort of their Lay-Z-Boy lair -- is absolutely unthinkable. What it boils down to is this: during the 48 hours when motherfuckers are finally free of those hateful punch card shackles, many opt to be chained to the couch, crunching pepperoni pizza-flavored Combos and living vicariously through the feats of millionaire strangers.

America wants its citizenry to be football fans. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded with a weekend where you won’t have to think. Not one solitary brain mechanism will have to grudgingly shift a gear. Not a single neuron impulse will distract you from staring at that 40" flatscreen until your eyeballs turn into melon-scooped gelatinous orbs. You won’t be bothered by unpleasant thoughts about health insurance or Halliburton or Diebold or sautéed human shank steaks dangling from Falujah telephone wires. You’ll be free to watch Terry Bradshaw do bald things and absorb commercials for trucks. When they string that 40-yard wide American flag across the field, just remember to salute, bitch.

By the way, the Eagles are going to gang rape the homo Vikings this Sunday. Maybe I’ll watch a little of it.

Read more articles in Life »