Good morning,
PRETTY SUPER GAME—OTHER STUFF, NOT SO MUCH
There was a time when Super Bowl games were, more often than not, blowouts. This phenomenon was reduced with increased parity—there no longer is a single dominant team.
The game was a gem. The Chiefs looked lackluster and defeated by halftime. They hardly had any time of possession and didn’t do much when they had the ball. But they came out after halftime a new team, led by the phenomenal young quarterback, Patrick Mahomes. That the game was tied up at 35-35 midway through the fourth quarter—on a two point conversion, no less—was indicative of the competitiveness and balance of the teams. I didn’t have a favorite in this game, so I was along for the ride, hoping for a good game. I was not disappointed.
Part of the Super Bowl experience is the commercials. I can’t help noticing that, as the quality of the game seems on an up-tick, the quality of the commercials seems to have declined. It used to be that the commercials ranged from clever to works of art. There were witty parodies, great plays-on-words, irony, and fun. Now, there is a preoccupation with celebrity, often at the expense of creativity. The focus on well-known personalities is an easy fall-back, feeding our society’s obsessions with celebrity.
That said, there were some that resonated. The best commercial this year? It has to be the John Travolta-led take-off on Grease, in which he starred 45 years ago. Yes, you heard that right—45 years. He said recalling the song and performing it again was a breeze, given his experience with the movie and starring in the play for a year on Broadway and on the road.
RIHANNA AT HALFTIME
Then there was the halftime show… Some random observations:
Rihanna can certainly perform. She has many songs I like and some I don’t. It’s generally not my taste but I’m not the target audience!
Way too much obvious lip-synching!
I’m not sure I understand the increased preoccupation with the aerial dimension in halftime shows. Sure, it’s in a big cavernous area but must we really fill it with distracting and sometimes absurd numbers of floating stages and displays?
Enough already with the crotch-grabbing and butt-grabbing. It is unnecessarily provocative, demeaning, and inappropriate, given the high number of young viewers.
As to the preoccupation with the crotch, it really goes to the over-sexualization of everything in today’s society. Not everything needs to be about sex. Look, I appreciate the activity as much as the next guy, but it has its time and place. It also need not be so graphic and objectifying.
BANNING OF BOOKS
I continue to be perplexed at the banning of books, particularly outstanding literature. Do politicians and local school boards actually feel that by eliminating books from the curriculum they somehow are staving off the decline of Western civilization? Do they realize that the focus on banned books only makes the desire to read them even more keen? Do they realize that book clubs have adjusted their focus toward the list of banned books? Or they motivated by electoral gain, publicity, and fear (or a combination of all three)?
I was taken by a recent statement on this subject by Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale:
“Today’s self-appointed moral gatekeepers can exclude my novel from school libraries…but as for shutting down the story completely, I’m afraid that horse has left the barn.”
Indeed it has, with book burning, curriculum controversies that focus on rewriting (or ignoring) history, controlling women’s bodies, and the fear created in walking down the street, not knowing who’s armed and might be having a bad day.
BALLOONS
Several final thoughts on the Chinese spy balloon:
On one of the talk shows this weekend, a military man suggested that the use of these balloons is evidence of the inadequacy of Chinese spy satellites. If their technology were up to ours, the balloons would not be necessary.
This has been going on for a while, including during the Trump administration. Yet, no one has said anything about it or done much to combat it.
We will learn a lot about the Chinese, their technology and their spying objectives when we recover and piece together the remnants of these balloons after they are shot down.
Now the Chinese claim that the United States has been using spy balloons over China. Either true, indicating this is the “new normal,” or not true, supporting the proposition that the best defense is a good offense. This would be stealing a page from the Soviet playbook (or from Trump) that, when caught red-handed, deflect to the person that found you out…
Have a great day,
Glenn
From the archives:
I agree!!!