Planning on forgetting about the real world for a few hours with this Sunday’s Super Bowl LV? Fuhgeddaboudit.
Despite being the smallest Super Bowl ever, Game LV is being touted as one of our biggest antidotes to the pandemic blues ever.
“Never has a Super Bowl been so needed. Usually, we love the Super Bowl because it shows up just as we are heavy and tired with the winter blahs. It sits in the holiday dead zone between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, which means that many have the time and energy to tune in. But this weekend will be more important than ever because we need to remember what the world is like when sports, fun and enthusiasm are front and center.”
Front and center sports fun and enthusiasm? Not so fast. As if the PPE goody game bags being given out tomorrow aren’t enough of a reminder we’re not in front of any pandemic, football fans will also have a hefty helping of politics mixed into their Super Bowl.
To begin with, there will be pigskin and poetry to feast on. 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman, the country’s first National Youth Poet Laureate, will be on hand to recite a poem at a Super Bowl pre-show. Imagine a Super Bowl poetry reading!
You remember Gorman. She was the one wearing a red inner tube on her head who recited a poem at Biden’s Inauguration. She also snagged a modeling contract with one of the world’s top modeling agencies, IMG (as did Vice President Harris’ stepdaughter Ella Emhoff).
Who cooked up this tailgate recipe?
“It’s unclear if Gorman’s invitation came directly from the NFL or from Jay-Z, whose Roc Nation entertainment company formed a partnership with the football league last year to help amp up its social justice profile in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his activism.”
If it is a real recipe for hypocrisy you’re after, however, consider mixing your pigskin shaped finger foods with a big ole Super Bowl of Colin Kaepernick-inspired ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s.
Ben & Jerry’s is the ice cream brand that has developed a reputation for being outspokenly progressive on social issues. For some, their political public statements are about as artery clogging as the trans-fat found in a pint of their Triple Carmel Chunk.
The company’s big FU to the NFL was a billboard put up in Tampa Bay at the Raymond James Stadium, the site of Sunday’s Super Bowl LV. The billboard is an advertisement for their “Change the Whirled” Colin Kaepernick themed ice cream flavor. Touch down.
Kaepernick has not played in the NFL since 2016, when he routinely took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality. He said in a press release that he hopes his partnership with the ice cream company would raise the volume on his calls to abolish and defund the police.
“I’m honored to partner with Ben & Jerry’s on Change the Whirled,” Kaepernick said. “Their commitment to challenging the anti-Black roots of policing in the United States demonstrates a material concern for the wellbeing of Black and Brown communities. My hope is that this partnership will amplify calls to defund and abolish the police and to invest in futures that can make us safer, healthier, and truly free.”
Not surprisingly, Ben and Jerry’s are also strong believers in defunding the police and making it easier to sue police officers.
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield recently announced the Campaign to End Qualified Immunity. The project is aimed at ending a controversial police reform Supreme Court doctrine that shields the police from personal lawsuits. Efforts to roll back qualified immunity gained new life last in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the hands of Minneapolis police. We are now united in a coalition that is resolved to end this get-out-of-jail-free card for bad cops,” Cohen said of the campaign. “It is now time to shift from protest to policy.”
The problem with this super-sized Phony Baloney Super Bowl Sundae is the hypocrisy sprinkled all over it. There are massive security issues that come with Sunday’s game.
“The Super Bowl marks the nation’s largest national security event since President Biden’s inauguration. In addition to hundreds of law enforcement officers, including 500 personnel from the Department of Homeland Security, the Tampa Police Department is the lead agency for the Super Bowl.”
It seems the only time you do not defund or abolish the police is when you need more policing.
I’m sure the officers within a Tampa police union who feel “kicked in the face” after the city designated all of its police units to man official NFL game day events to celebrate Super Bowl LV despite serious health concerns regarding the coronavirus pandemic are going to enjoy looking up at that billboard during game time.
Still in the mood for a second helping of that baloney sundae? Open wide. The upcoming Social Justice Super Bowl and the NFL have a whole lot of political correctness and virtue signaling on the menu just for you. Social and racial justice issues and COVID-19-related messages will be prominent during the Super Bowl, the most-watched television event of the year.
“It’s going to be ‘Black Lives Matter,’ it’s going to be COVID. It’s going to be [about] coming together,” says Bill Oberlander, the co-founder and executive creative director of the ad agency OBERLAND.
Sunday is going to be the day we remember what the world was like when sports, fun and enthusiasm were front and center? Sounds like a half-baked idea to me.
