Notable Christian (and unnotable quarterback) Tim Tebow is everyone's favorite topic of sports conversation, and, more importantly, the topic of this exact conversation over and over again:
GUY: "God, Tim Tebow is shitty."
OTHER GUY: "He keeps winning!"
GUY: "He throw ten passes a game, connects on four of them, and the Broncos' defense does all the work to keep them in the game so that he can 'drive them to victory.' He's such a sanctimonious toolbox."
OTHER GUY: "Oh, so you hate him for being Christian!"
GUY: "No, I hate him for being bad at his job and still having thousands upon thousands of people who cheer for him because he bows down in reflective prayer every time a camera's around. I hate him because he's played awful team after awful team, barely beat them with help from a defense that has to work its ass off every week, and he's still supposed to be a star despite being Mark Sanchez with a Jesus piece."
OTHER GUY: "I think that says more about you than about him."
It's that last line that's utterly infuriating. The NFL is rife with quarterbacks who've won despite not adding much to their teams - they're competent guys who aren't asked to do much and deliver exactly that. Trent Dilfer won Super Bowl XXXV as the 31st-ranked quarterback in the league, because he had a great defense. Terry Bradshaw is a hall of famer whose career QB rating is 70.9 - he was basically just good enough to not screw up his team's amazing defense. Brad Johnson won a championship with the Buccaneers, mainly because of (you guessed it) his team's stellar defense.
The phenomenon of mediocre game managers steering teams to victory is nothing new. But in the case of Tebow, it is. You placing him in that category says more about you than about him...as Jen Floyd Engel is happy to remind us.
What if Tim Tebow were a Muslim?
Imagine for a second, the Denver Broncos quarterback is a devout follower of Islam, sincere and principled in his beliefs and thus bowed toward Mecca to celebrate touchdowns. Now imagine if Detroit Lions players Stephen Tulloch and Tony Scheffler mockingly bowed toward Mecca, too, after tackling him for a loss or scoring a touchdown, just like what happened Sunday.
I know what would happen. All hell would break loose.
Stinging indictments issued by sports columnists. At least a few outraged religious leaders chiming in on his behalf. Depending on what else had happened that day, they might have a chance at becoming Keith Olbermann's Worst Person In The World.
And there would be apologies. Oh, Lord, would there be apologies — by players, by coaches, possibly by ownership with a tiny chance of a statement from NFL commish Roger Goodell.
You cannot mock Muslim faith, not in this country, not anywhere really.
Awww...she has a sad because Muslims don't get mocked for being kind of crappy athletes whose popularity is due entirely to their preening displays of faith. Here's a list of famous Muslim athletes. In case you were wondering, not a one of them followed up scoring a basket or having a good round by pulling out a mat and praying to Mecca, because to do such a thing would have been kind of dickish.
His religious fervor is an easy target for the vitriol spewed from those who dislike him, but the reasons are much deeper than that. From his advocacy of abstinence to his infamous “You will never see another team play this hard” speech at Florida, it is like he is too good to be true. He is too nice, and thereby we want him to trip up so we can feel better. We want him to be revealed as a hypocrite, and when that fails to happen, we settle for gleefully celebrating his failures on the football field. And why? Because he dares to say thanks?
No. It's because he's not that good. And, more importantly, it's because he's built up this cult of personality that tells us we must root for his success because he's such a good person and, by extension, such a better person than us. It's not the negative reaction to Tebow that's an indication of moral weakness or a character flaw; it's the breathless worship and reflexive moral superiority that we're supposed to imbue to the 47.5% of passes he completes.
What this whole repeating cycle of Tebow — rip his game, mock his faith, rise to his defense, repeat — has revealed about religious discourse in America is ugly. We have become so enamored of politically correct dogma that we protect every minority from even the slightest blush of insensitivity while letting the very institutions that the majority holds dear to be ridiculed. And this defense that Tebow invites such scrutiny with his willingness to publicly live as he privately believes calls into question what exactly it is we value.
And herein lies the problem. Tim Tebow's value to people like Engel isn't the charity work he does. It isn't to the teammates he supports, or the fans he sends his love to. Tebow's value is that he lets people like Engel feel like enlightened victims of a society that doesn't see how good and pure she is. Tebow is the newest scapegoat in an old saga: the besiegement of true believers (or those who want to be true believers) by society at large.
If there is a problem with mocking Tim Tebow, it's that he makes it too easy. He wants the slings and arrows of the world trained on him when he does Super Bowl commercials for Focus on the Family; he is the victim whenever someone makes fun of his signature kneel. That victimization feeds into the legend of Tebow and his flock, and makes him all the stronger even as he continues to be a poor man's Donovan McNabb (who is, at this point, his own poor man's Donovan McNabb). It doesn't matter what he does on the field, it just matters that he's morally superior while he does it.
Tim Tebow, as far as I can tell, isn't a bad guy. He's just a sanctimonious pseudo-dick whom a great number of people think can do no wrong because Ephesians is rattling around his head instead of his receiver's route. His sin isn't bowing to God on the field; it's empowering religious and cultural forces who've spent decades mercilessly mocking others to, once again, claim they're the victims in all of this.
I had to use all the energy I had after that game by going to the gym and running it off, so only putting the post up now. But man, did the US team earn that motherfucker. So, a song for them:
And for everyone who missed that nail-biting emotional rollercoaster of a game because they're prejudiced against soccer or still sneeringly think there's no such thing as a woman's sport that's entertaining to watch, I offer this song:
It was during the half time performance of the Black Eyed Peas last night, precisely when the dancers with boxes on their heads came out, when I realized I was in a very Devo set of mind, which is to say, really enjoying the de-evolution of culture as described by the band Devo. (Example: “Those two people over there in the polyester double-knit body suits driving that gas-guzzling Cadillac are more DE-vo than we could ever be.”) Some people would put boxes on their dancers’ heads to symbolize or represent something, to create an emotional impact with artfulness. BEP does it because why the fuck not? It’s truly beautiful, if you have a real appreciation for mediocrity, which I occasionally do, and why I have come to enjoy watching the Super Bowl. And last night was awesome, everything I wanted. Besides the actual game—-the fact that football players are really good at what they do justifies everything else that happens around the game—-last night was a glorious sea of mediocrity.
At its best, the spectacle of the Super Bowl proves the principle that aesthetics by committee will tend towards the mediocre, because that which offends no one will get more backing than that which is actually interesting. Of course, “offending no one” is another way of saying “boring”. Clay Aiken is the epitome of this principle, but last night’s Super Bowl really was competitive. The ads tended towards absurdity in an attempt to be eye-catching without having any of the bite that actual humor has. (One exception was the little kid playing at Darth Vader, which still had some bite in it.) The “jokes” in ads that dared to offend mostly were pretend daring to offend—-sexist jokes that are less about having bite than about reassuring the lowest common denominator that all their vicious prejudices are still acceptable. But the cake of mediocrity was definitely that BEP performance. That was the most perfect “offend no one, entertain no one” balance of mediocrity I’ve ever seen. I mean, they had the word “love” all over the place—-it’s unobjectionable, and in this context, utterly meaningless. Love? Who or what, to what purpose? I don’t know, but isn’t it a nice word?
They should have the Black Eyed Peas play every year, seriously. They’re the perfect halftime band. They can’t be too awesome, like Prince, which always causes complaints from the large idiot faction of the audience. But they didn’t make you want to hide behind your couch at the tragedy of it all, like The Who last year. They are white bread with butter: we can all tolerate it, but no one will really enjoy it too much.
Matt Zoller Seitz declared at Salon today that the Super Bowl spectacle (which is different from the game, which was actually interesting this year) is a temperature gauge of the national mood. And that would mean that the national mood is one of not wanting anyone to be too happy or too sad or too thoughtful or too opinionated or too intellectual or too stupid. The more meaningless and mediocre, the better. Add some sparkle to it so people don’t notice that it’s empty. It’s safer that way.
The Patriarchy is back! (Not that he ever really went anywhere, I suppose, except to the bank a few times.)
In this episode, The Patriarchy gets his mansplain on to discuss the most important issue in America today: LeBron James. This isn’t about a basketball player switching teams, this is about the most browerful bromance of of our modern brage.
My brother and I will be heading to NYC this weekend to go to a Yankee game, something we haven’t done in decades. It will be Old Timers Day, and since we’ve had the tickets for some time, and we were looking forward to the nostalgia of going to the games when we were young whippersnappers. How little did we know that two icons of the Yankee family would pass this week—first the voice, Bob Sheppard, and now today George Steinbrenner. What can you say about George Steinbrenner? The NYDN:
George Steinbrenner, a towering and intimidating figure who dominated the New York sports scene for 35 years, winning 11 American League pennants and seven world championships as owner of the Yankees, in and around two suspensions from baseball and multiple feuds and firings, died Tuesday morning in Tampa after suffering a massive heart attack. He was 80.
...Steinbrenner’s operation of the Yankees was one of constant upheaval, turmoil and instability. This was no better evidenced than by his hiring and firing of 12 managers (including Billy Martin five times) between Ralph Houk (whom he inherited in 1973) and Torre. And prior to Cashman’s ascension at age 30 to the Yankee GM role in 1998, no less than 14 people (including Michael twice) held that position before ultimately finding the working conditions intolerable and, in many cases, hazardous to their health.
...Through the years, Steinbrenner had acrimonious fallings out with many of his star players such as Reggie Jackson, Lou Piniella, Goose Gossage, Graig Nettles and Sparky Lyle, only to later patch things up and welcome them back into the Yankee fold. With Yankee icon Yogi Berra, however, the feud was a lasting one. Berra, who Steinbrenner fired as manager just 16 games into the 1985 season, vowed never to return to Yankee Stadium “as long as (Steinbrenner’s) there,” and was estranged from the organization until January of 1999 when a peace pact was finally brokered between the two with Steinbrenner issuing a public apology to him.
My personal favorite obit for The Boss comes from Mike Lopresi of Gannett. He captured what I felt when I heard the news.
Everything and everybody in baseball took a back seat to The Boss on Tuesday. George Steinbrenner was born on the 4th of July and died the morning of the All-Star Game. Somehow it all fits.
He was so, so American — an enthusiastic master of capitalism, not to mention free speech. How paler would his legacy be, had he spent less and talked softer?
... the Steinbrenner story will forever be a mixed one. Many men live long enough to win. He lived long enough to not only win but to be loathed, lampooned — and somehow in the end, revered.
In the past 37 years, the other 29 teams in major league baseball have had more than 100 owners. The Yankees have had one. Time enough to remake a franchise’s mystique, not to mention his own.
The tantrums, the firings, the moments of loutish behavior — they all deserve mention in the Steinbrenner final box score. But it is striking how his black marks faded into the past. As the memorials poured in Tuesday, the most popular proclamation was that here was the greatest and most significant owner in the history of sport.
Few voices dissented. Not even those with Steinbrenner scars.
And former announcer Bob Sheppard, who died two days ago, was indeed the Voice of God. It was soothing to hear his mellifluous voice announce the lineup. He retired in 2000, so I have never been to a game when it was other than his voice on the PA. Below is a tribute video for his retirement, filled with players Tim and I watched play on the field back in the day—Reggie Jackson, Graig Nettles, Don Mattingly and more.
Don’t forget to read Pandagoal and follow them on Twitter for coverage of the World Cup.
I don’t know about you, but at our house, we’re taking full advantage of the next USA game against Ghana being on a Saturday to have some people over to watch the game. Evite lets you make a song list for your invitation, so I put in some songs about the world and about the USA and Americans, as did others. I was going to use one of them for the Friday Genius Ten, but there weren’t actually any songs on the list that were appropriately “go get ‘em!” kind of songs. Pop music has been a wee bit sarcastic in the past 40+ years. So I thought I should go back to a time before that to find a song that’s quintessentially America and off the hook, for pumping up purposes. I settled on this for my original song. Leave your mixes in comments, suggestions for playlists for Saturday, or thoughts on whatever else is on your mind. As usual, open thread.
Original song: “Let’s Have A Party” by Wanda Jackson
1) “The Wallflower Song” by Etta James
2) “C’mon Everybody” by Eddie Cochran
3) “Hey! Bo Diddley” by Bo Diddley
4) “Shakin’ All Over” by Johnny Kid and the Pirates (even in a 50s-era rock mix, it’s impossible to avoid songs from England)
5) “Bluejean Bop” by Gene Vincent
6) “Goo Goo Muck” by The Cramps
7) “Big Red Rocket Of Love” by The Reverend Horton Heat
8) “That’ll Be The Day” by Buddy Holly and the Crickets
9) “Honey Don’t” by Carl Perkins
10) “Finger Poppin’ Time” by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters
And it’s okay to dance around like a dork. We won in the 91st minute after two lousy calls that took goals from us. If ever there was a time for it, it’s now.
With the US and England revving up for action today, don’t forget to follow @Pandagoal and head over to Pandagoal.com after the game for recap and conversation. We’re only in the second round of World Cup action, and there’s already plenty of excitement, controversy, and red card-age to discuss.
Remember: every time you watch a soccer game, a wingnut loses his mind.
Reading this only clarifies something that’s been really obvious to me for awhile—-the emotional satisfaction of being a wingnut comes from being able to rationalize your deep desire to be a hater. This is something I’ve suspected for a long time about the anti-choice movement in particular, and today my column at RH Reality Check touches on how much not having a life and hating people who do is really at the heart of the anti-choice movement. But the fact that all the right wing pundits have organized around hating on the World Cup is pretty much proof positive that they believe that what their audience wants is an endless stream of haterade. World Cup is growing in popularity. People enjoy it. It tends, in the U.S. at least, to weaken nationalist sentiment. That’s reason enough to flip out and try to take a giant piss all over it.
It doesn’t help things, either, that Americans tend to associate soccer with women and girls, and with immigrant populations. Which I suppose is amusing to the rest of the world, but in the U.S. it just means that soccer can be used handily by conservative white dudes as a symbol of everything they consider inferior. I don’t think it’s accurate to say that World Cup’s growing popularity in the U.S. is strictly due to immigration, Title IX, and hipstery urban liberal types—-I think the marketing blitz probably has a whole lot to do with it—-but the perception is that all these hated trends are the only reason for World Cup’s popularity. Or the popularity of soccer in general, especially the growth in youth leagues, pick-up games, and even MLS.
This shores up a concern I’ve had that soccer is increasingly becoming a touchstone for racists who target their hatred at Mexican-Americans, alongside other cultural markers like Cinco de Mayo and even, amazingly, the eating of salsa. There’s already reports of racist incidents that center around soccer, such as this Texas teacher who flipped out on a student who was wearing the jersey of a Mexican team. Considering that World Cup is touching down during a time of aggravated racial tension in the Southwest, I fear that these kinds of associations will just get stronger. Already you’re getting some pundits trying to work that implication in.
Discussing soccer’s popularity in the U.S. on his June 10 program, G. Gordon Liddy asked, “Whatever happened to American exceptionalism?” Liddy noted that “this game ... originated with the South American Indians and instead of a ball, they used to use the head, the decapitated head, of an enemy warrior.”
In reality, of course, soccer was invented in England. But this sort of misinformation and blatant racism while trying to shore up hatred of the sport is endemic to the right wing anti-World Cup panic.
MRC’s Dan Gainor: “Soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport,” “the left is pushing [soccer] in schools across the country.” Also on the June 10 G. Gordon Liddy Show, Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor said, “the problem here is, soccer is designed as a poor man or poor woman’s sport” and that “the left is pushing it in schools across the country.” He added: “generally football games in this country don’t devolve into riots or wars.” He later added that the sport of soccer “is being sold” as necessary due to the “browning of America.”
Perhaps the problem is that G. Gordon Liddy and his guests think England is south of the American border? That’s the only explanation I can come up with. First they credit South American Indians with inventing a game that comes from England, and then they conflate soccer violence with the “browning of America”, even though the football thuggery they’re thinking of is once again the province of pale Englishmen.
Pandagon’s side sports project Pandagoal is all geared up and ready for World Cup.
But are you?
Oh, we all know the drill. You know that World Cup is important to most of the world. It’s bigger than Christmas. And you plan to watch it. You plan to look up what “offside” means so that you don’t come across as a fool. You want to be part of the world community, though you may not feel completely at home yelling “U! S! A!” tomorrow during the US/England match-up (2PM EST). You want to be a part of this, because you know that it’s a moral failing that the U.S. can be such snot bags to the rest of the world about Everyone’s Favorite Sport But Ours. But you don’t know jack about what to expect going in to the World Cup.
Marc has put together a guide on World Cup called “World Cup: Guide to Sounding Like You Know Stuff”. It’s a compendium of the best sites to read so you go in to the games talking about why Spain are the likely winners this year, and what non-Western teams have any chance of an upset. Before you hit the local pub with your Uncle Sam hat, prepared to yell offensive shit about “limeys”, read up so you don’t sound the fool.
If you haven’t heard about this newest scandal about to blow the doors off this administration and finally begin the impeachment proceedings that should have started on January 21st, 2009, well, I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding under. It all started when Cat Corben of American Thinker accused Obama of making up his daughter’s soccer game so he could sneak off to do god only knows what—-probably make up some birth certificates—-and it was immediately picked up by a host of conservative bloggers and Rush Limbaugh himself. Scandal!
True,the three pieces of evidence Corben offered were immediately shown to be 100% horseshit. Contrary to his claims, there was a game scheduled, the neighborhood it was in is considered plenty safe enough for soccer games, and members of the press saw Obama at the game. However, as we all know, this should settle nothing. Many questions remain, and no one is addressing the biggest one of all:
What is this game “soccer”? Can we be sure there is such a thing?
Let’s look at the evidence that there is a game called “soccer”, and show why these claims are fishy.
Claim #1: People play this game all over the world. Oh sure, we hear all about this game that’s played all over the world, and how there’s even big tournaments with fancy names like “World Cup” watched by gazillions of fans. But how can we be so sure? Has anyone ever been to these exotic lands to see this game being played? Of course not.
Worse, the claim is made that the rest of the world calls the game “football” and not “soccer”. Look, the people claiming that this game exists can’t even get the name of the game straight! How are we supposed to believe there is such a game?
Claim #2: The game has rules. All games have rules, right? The soccer pushers claim their imaginary game does, too. But these rules are so silly that you have to believe they’re making them up. What kind of ball game doesn’t permit the players to touch the ball with their hands? Balls were designed with hands in mind, morons. Balls are for touching with your hands. And that’s what she said.
And if you think I’m crazy, just ask someone who claims that soccer exists to explain the offsides rule to you. And laugh as they try to get their story straight.
Claim #3: Both girls and boys play it. You see the pictures that believers whip out to “prove” that soccer exists, and you’ll see men and women, boys and girls—-all playing this “soccer”. Do they really expect us to believe there’s a sport like that? In the real world, there’s sports for men/boys and sports for women/girls. Men have football, basketball, and golf. Women have volleyball, ice skating, and getting their periods. And never the two shall meet.
Claim #4: This game has equipment. Okay, the ball they claim to play with looks real enough, but the shoes?
Give me a break. That doesn’t look like a shoe. You’d just get stuck in the ground and not be able to move, like a golf peg or something. Proof positive that this is not only a conspiracy, but that they’re mocking us by leaving giant clues around.
The President can’t go to his daughter’s soccer game if there’s no such thing as soccer. Obviously, this conspiracy goes much deeper than Corben or Limbaugh even realized.
Is it me or has the world gotten even more hyperparanoid and confused about sexual orientation and gender expression? In what is both an absurd and incomprehensible decision, GLAAD reports that Stars on Ice sponsors are so concerned about the flamboyance of Olympic ice skater Johnny Weir (or is it his costumes?), that they don’t want him on the tour.
When was the last time male figure skaters and BUTCH coexisted in your mind? Why does it matter anyway? Are Dick and Jane going to be gender confused after a 90-minute ice show? I think these people have lost their minds.
GLAAD has learned from a source that wishes to remain anonymous that sponsors of the Stars on Ice Tour, which include Smuckers and IMG Entertainment, have refused to allow 3-time US National Champion and 2-time Olympian Johnny Weir to participate because they claim that he is “not family friendly.”
To say that Weir is “not family friendly” would be a clear jab at his perceived sexual orientation. Weir is extremely involved with his family. He is putting his younger brother through college, and supports the family financially because his father’s disability prohibits him from working. Weir’s dedication to his family can be clearly documented in the Sundance series, Be Good Johnny Weir, which follows him and his family and friends through his life and career as a championship skater.
Weir’s performance and costume style is sometimes considered flashier than those of other skaters, leading to questions about his perceived sexual orientation. While Weir has not officially announced his sexual orientation, he has garnered a significant amount of LGBT fans. He remains one of the most outspoken skaters today, and won an online poll asking fans “Who would you like to see guest star on Stars on Ice?”
Well that last point shows that the only paranoia exists in the minds of the sponsors. I’m not sure which aspect of Weir set off these alarms—is it the ornate and creative costumes? Over the years, the costumes of male figure skaters have become more free and flamboyant, regardless of the athlete’s real or perceived sexual orientation.
For instance I remember when the incredibly talented Rudy Galindo, the 1987 World Junior Champion and the 1996 U.S. National Champion—and was one of the first figure skaters that I recall coming out of the closet. Take a look at him from this short program at the ‘96 Worlds. I remember his flamboyance and oh-so-gey velvet costume were considered radical.
Now how tame was that? That costume (or his known homosexuality at the time) didn’t stop Galindo from continuing to compete, and to go on to a professional skating career, including a 10-year stint with the Tom Collins’ Champions on Ice show.
Now look at Johnny Weir’s short program at the NHK Trophy last year.
All I’m saying is that it’s all relative, and with a broader acceptance and comfort with self-expression along the gender norm lines within the sport, these sponsors and Stars on Ice need to get a flipping grip.
The Canadian women’s hockey team won the gold medal at the Olympics. Pandagon would like to congratulate these fine female athletes for their performance on the ice during the game, but also after the game, where they showed the world how to celebrate an Olympic gold medal.
They also commandeered the ice surfacing machine and drove around on it. To folks with common sense, this entire party on ice is about as surprising as the sun coming up in the morning. You don’t have to follow women’s hockey to know that female hockey players are athletes, and as such, will behave like athletes do when they win and win big. Which is, they party. They guzzle champagne and goof off. They celebrate themselves for kicking ass, as they should.
But of course, they are women and we all know that it’s just unladylike to show that much pride and ambition. And so they must be smacked down! But it’s also unseemly nowadays to be an overt sexist who comes right out and says, “Female athletes are illegitimate to begin with, and so the mere fact that we let them play sports should mean they act with extreme humility when they win, ideally taking those medals they win and immediately handing them over, heads down, to family members or perhaps the men’s team.” But I wish that people would just come out and say that, because the other option—-besides the impossible “grow up and be happy for these women”—-is fucking concern trolling.
The Canadian women’s ice hockey team have been forced to apologize for celebrating their Olympic gold by swigging champagne and smoking cigars, The Sun reported Friday.
The partying took place after the players had collected their medals for their 2-0 win over the United States Thursday.
The International Olympic Committee had said it would investigate whether the public celebration was harmful to the image of the players and ice hockey in general.
Oh, I’m sure people will swear up and down that men would get the same treatment. And maybe they will….from here on out. But let’s not fool ourselves here. Some of the complaints are serious reaches, and not just when you express the idea that hockey players guzzling champagne (which is what the male winners of the Stanley Cup do as a tradition) is somehow an embarrassment to hockey’s image. That they had to fend off complaints that this encouraged smoking is even sillier, but the mother of all concern troll complaints is that a player on the team was “underage” at 18, which is the drinking age in many parts of Canada. That’s the sort of thing that screams “reach”, and the reaching is obviously due to the fact that a whole lot of people still have problems with female athletes, especially when they behave like athletes.
This tension seems pronounced when it comes to the Olympics, where a lot of properly feminine sports that involve costumes and the athletes starving themselves—-like ice skating and gymnastics—-are promoted heavily, and where women’s ski jump is still being kept out, with outdated arguments about ovary-jiggling being employed. A lot of the Olympics organizers take the notion that the athletes are role models way too seriously, and when you start talking “role model” expectations and women, you’re going to start seeing a lot of sexist assumptions about ladylike behavior being employed. Tracy Clark-Flory found at least one blogger using this incident to slam the very idea of women play “men’s” sports. I wish hockey was that much of a threat to the patriarchy.
Jesse started a thread on it, but I thought I’d weigh in with a couple of observations. You know it’s a rough year in misogynist Superbowl advertising when an ad suggesting that women’s role in bearing sons matters more than their very right to live can’t even win the title of “Most Misogynist”. (Though it’s only on a technicality—-the Tebow ad that aired during the Super Bowl was too confusing to register as overtly hateful, though it did insinuate that the only reason women die in childbirth is they aren’t “tough” enough, and apparently had it coming.) The debate raging on Twitter on who wins that game seemed to settled on the tire ad where a man sacrifices his wife for some tires, and that sacrifice isn’t deemed good enough, because everyone knows bitches ain’t shit. The big theme this year was the tired sexist trope that implies not only that women rule over men with an iron pussy, and that we use our endless power to be screeching, emasculating harpies who hate male pleasure for the sheer fun of it. Dodge Charger and Dockers weighed in on this theme. However, Dockers’ ad was incoherent, because they weren’t willing to go as far as the print ads and make the message clear. In the print ads, the text openly blames feminism for men’s supposed emasculation, and calls for a return to male dominance that never actually left completely in the real world. I haven’t yet seen a Dockers ad suggesting that one regains their manhood by putting on some khaki pants before smacking a bitch up, but judging from the ads last night, it may only be a matter of time.
But my “favorite” in the woman hating Olympics was definitely the Flo TV “Spineless” ad. The narrator follows a man who we’ve been told has his spine removed (because using the preferred term “pussy whipped” wouldn’t get past the censors, though that’s the implication), and the evidence is that his evil bitch of a wife makes him shop when he wants to stay at home and watch the game, and he goes along with it, even though we all know that doing feminine things like shopping is objectively stupid. (Bud Light also argued that reading is something that is off-limits for dudes, because it’s so stupid and girly.) The way for a man to regain his balls/spine, suggested the ad, was to get a Flo TV so that he could passively-aggressively watch his game while pointedly ignoring his wife on their outing while technically obeying her overbearing feminine demands he’s powerless to resist openly.
This was my favorite, because it contained a structural flaw. Its pitch was supposedly aimed at men who have harpy bitch wives who don’t let them watch sports. But it was playing during a sporting event, when said victims of harpy bitch wives cannot, by definition, be watching. Because they’re out in the stores pretending to give a shit about that she-creature that controls them with her pussy. By airing during a sporting event, the ad basically admits that it’s lying, and that men are not helpless victims of the pussy-driven, sports-hating matriarchy. And thus the only real reason for the ad is to bash women to sell products. Or perhaps advertisers really believe that the harpies of the world only allow their men one game a year—-the Super Bowl—-and this is when they’ll make their desperate pitch, reaching out to these poor broken men who are eager to passively aggressively annoy their captors. I’m not betting on that, though, because I bet this ad runs during other games.
In general, the theme of this year is that that masculinity is barely surviving a vagified assault, and the modern man needs a bunch of products in order to revolt and/or survive the hellish matriarchy that men were too foolish to put down in the 70s, when they had their shot to stop the rising tide of women working, women controlling their own bodies, and other hippie shit like that. Even Audi—-Audi!—-put out an ad on this theme, implying that that modern man has to suffer this horrific police state of overbearing environmentalists, and that they need this Audi product to survive the inquisition.* I kind of wish it was put up next to the Tebow forced childbirth advocacy, because perhaps someone would realize there is something fucked up about the modern right wing argument that we need so many more children that we have to force women to provide on pain of imprisonment, and that we need to give all these children the shittiest, most disgusting, unlivable planet possible. And if we don’t do this, your balls will fall off.
The most transparent pandering was when CBS aired an ad telling women that they can have heart attacks, too, so watch out for that. Overall message: yes, we helped craft an ad suggesting women should risk their lives in childbirth, but we don’t want you to die of a heart attack, so we don’t hate women! Here’s another ad showing how women are bitches!
The good news is that the Saints really pulled it out. That was awesome and exhilarating. No, it’s not going to solve New Orleans’ continuing post-Katrina problems, but I think it’s okay to be happy for them. All the shots of people partying in the streets in the Quarter—-plus all the jokes about boozing it up, taking it off, and eating Cajun food that dominated the sports news and overall news cycle—-probably will end up being good for tourism, which is the sort of thing that will help get them back on their feet.
*And this was supposed to be an ad for a “green” product! I realize it was supposed to be ironic, but it was mostly incoherent.
The main thrust of Super Bowl advertising this year seems to be what terribly castrating, useless bitches women are. It’s sad when the GoDaddy commercial shows women in the most positive light.
Notable Christian (and unnotable quarterback) Tim Tebow is everyone's favorite topic of sports conversation, and, more importantly, the topic of this exact conversation over and over again:
It was during the half time performance of the Black Eyed Peas last night, precisely when the dancers with boxes on their heads came out, when I realized I was in a very Devo set of mind, which is to say, really enjoying the de-evolution of culture as described by the band Devo. (
My brother and I will be heading to NYC this weekend to go to a Yankee game, something we haven’t done in decades. It will be Old Timers Day, and since we’ve had the tickets for some time, and we were looking forward to the nostalgia of going to the games when we were young whippersnappers. How little did we know that two icons of the Yankee family would pass this week—first the voice, Bob Sheppard, and now today George Steinbrenner. What can you say about George Steinbrenner? 
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Pandagon’s side sports project 
If you haven’t heard about this newest scandal about to blow the doors off this administration and finally begin the impeachment proceedings that should have started on January 21st, 2009, well, I don’t know what rock you’ve been hiding under. It all started when 
