I actually watched the Super Bowl through the halftime show, and peeked in during the more than three hours of pre-game guff, and I have to say I got an enormous kick out of all the woke effusions, not only in the ads but also in Viola Davis' pissed-off DGAF narration on the de-integration and re-integration of the NFL and inaugural poet Amanda Gorman enlisted to introduce the COIN-TOSS (which was performed by "COVID-19 nurse manager" Suzie Dorner after being thanked for her service by the referee). It may have all been bullshit -- particularly the ads from soulless corporations professing an interest in social justice -- but it was American bullshit and thus perfect for the occasion. Sucks that Tom Brady didn't get his ass kicked, but nothing in this world is perfect and I'll take what I can get.
Part of the fun was imagining the rage of pinheads and klansmen at this grossly pro-minority entertainment. I bet Tubby was mad he couldn't vomit his rage through his customary social-media puke-funnels, though his boy Sniffy stepped up ("One comercial in and it’s already woketopia. 🙄 #SuperBowlLV").
We who have free souls, it touches us not. The Super Bowl spectacle outside the game itself has always been ridiculous, and what people think of as its "great moments" are actually pathetic -- like the kneeling Clydesdales commercial in the post-9/11 Super Bowl. Remember that shit? Jesus Christ, people fell for it! I was disappointed Budweiser didn't follow up over the next few years with Clydesdales invading Iraq, then piling naked prisoners of war into human pyramids (maybe they couldn't figure out out how to make a Clydesdale do a thumbs-up).
Still, in our modern age these are the kind of microaggressions that animate rightwing snowflakes. So far the brethren seem to be aiming their rage at, of all things, the Bruce Springsteen Jeep commercial -- which, to the extent it's about anything but selling the faint echo of military ingenuity to rich suburbanites, is a corny hymn to centrism ("the geographic center of the lower 48," get it?). Funny, I thought the big rightwing message-of-the-moment was that Joe Biden is a dangerous radical dragging America to socialism!
Mollie Hemingway starts by calling Springsteen a "left-wing political activist," which I'm sure is how he's best known in the caves and klaverns of wingnutdom, and announcing that his commercial "fell flat and faced mockery and opposition from many viewers." (Ever notice that the people who whine the most about cancel culture always sound like old Soviet propagandists when they approach any subject having anything to do with the arts?)
Hemingway, after briefly admitting that "many Americans love Springsteen’s music," denounces The Boss for several paragraphs because "like so many other wealthy celebrities, [he] regularly speaks ill of Republican voters and politicians," unlike real populists such as Kevin Sorbo and the guy who drinks his own piss on YouTube. Then she complains that the ad was fake -- that's right, an ad on TV! Fake! -- because though this Springsteen fellow is "extremely well known for being from New Jersey" he was shown "wearing a cowboy hat and boots" (and "small earrings in each ear," woo woo). Also, "The Argument For Unity Was Not Made Well," because duh, what about the "74 million Trump-voting Americans who lived through four years of epithets and refusal by elites such as Springsteen to treat the president of the United States as legitimate"? And then Springsteen and his 81 million co-conspirators had the nerve to vote against Trump, resulting in Joe Biden's so-called "election"? Where's the healing?
Hemingway closes:
Jeep sales will not heal the fabric of the country. Jeep ads can’t even help toward that goal so long as they are using dishonest and manipulative partisan framing in service of car sales.
"Manipulative partisan framing in service of car sales" -- forbid it, almighty God! You sell cars by flattering the shit out of the customer, hornswaggling him with phony price points, then making him feel like he owes you something for your time -- everybody knows that!
Well, we all did a little drinking during the Super Bowl, though some of us waited until we sobered up to write about it. Clearly the NFL is part of the Deep State and must be countered. Get ready for USFL II!
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