- Joined
- Sep 12, 2013
- Messages
- 9,924
- Name
- Wil Fay
This is an article that was published and then minutes later unpublished by Rolling Stone. I think it's worth reading and thinking about. I love the NFL but it's impossible not to recognize how right this guy is ....
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http://www.mrdestructo.com/2015/01/everything-stupid-is-alive-and.html?m=1
Here's a horrifying game you can play during this Sunday's Super Bowl and the nearly 12 hours of pre- and postgame content: count the number of times you hear some variation of "deflated balls" and compare that to the number of times during Super Bowls XLV or XLVII you heard the phrases "two-time accused rapist" or "accused co-conspirator in a double murder." Or just compare "deflated balls" to "brain damage." Then see if the first number dwarfs a combination of the last three by an order of magnitude. It will.
Naturally, this comparison isn't meant to equate accusations of equipment tampering with accusations of rape and murder or mental destruction. The latter three are so vastly more repugnant, which is why you will hear about them as little as possible. That silence ultimately stems from the NFL's inevitable trajectory toward a vertically integrated entertainment-capital complex that also happens to include football. It is a spectacle machine and an ATM that reflects, promotes and admires itself. For all the talk of harsh gridiron realities, the NFL hasn't been in the reality business for a while. Reality is its enemy, and the Super Bowl—the largest spectacle of the game—is paradoxically its most vulnerable creation. It is an event ballooned so large that the slightest puncture threatens to send it deflating into a long, suffocating series of fatal escaping farts.
Four-point-five million dollars for that?" This is serious business, and we are seriously invested, regardless of the fact that this is the act of insane people—like bitching not about the existence of Muzak, but because your favorite shoegaze band isn't being played when the local cable company customer-service flunky puts you on hold.
At every step of the way, someone should laugh at this, and at every step of the way, every person involved in serving you this spectacle will completely fail to accomplish this basic human function. The NFL is all business at every given moment, because of that very serious $7 billion annual cost to the networks that broadcast it and are the primary source of "adversarial" journalism about it. On a workaday basis, this elevates insignificant bullshit like coaching and "game plans" to geopolitical high art, like two kids playing Risk thinking they are Talleyrand and Metternich about to vanquish Napoleon and establish the Concert of Europe.
When actual news breaks, the integration of the NFL as entertainment with its own reporting wing becomes unmistakable. At this point, Sports Illustrated's Peter King can't speak when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is drinking a glass of water. ESPN's Adam Schefter initially responded to Goodell's preposterous two-game suspension of Ray Rice for knocking out his fiancée Janay by asking, "Was the Commissioner lenient enough?" There were, after all, the hundreds of thousands of people paying for fantasy leagues for whom Rice's existence manifested solely as someone Starting or Not Starting in the NFL.
Or consider NBC's broadcast of the divisional playoff game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots. On raw audio, you could hear play-by-play man Al Michaels going over prepared comments about Goodell and his handling of the Rice domestic violence issue and the fatuous report by Robert Mueller. Following Michaels, color commentator Cris Collinsworth stated, "The decision initially to suspend Ray Rice for two games was a mistake, and the commissioner admitted that. But I never once in all my dealings with the commissioner doubted his integrity." He sounded like he was staring at a picture of a hooded man holding up a copy of that day's newspaper and a revolver to his son's head.
.........hit the link for more.
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http://www.mrdestructo.com/2015/01/everything-stupid-is-alive-and.html?m=1
Here's a horrifying game you can play during this Sunday's Super Bowl and the nearly 12 hours of pre- and postgame content: count the number of times you hear some variation of "deflated balls" and compare that to the number of times during Super Bowls XLV or XLVII you heard the phrases "two-time accused rapist" or "accused co-conspirator in a double murder." Or just compare "deflated balls" to "brain damage." Then see if the first number dwarfs a combination of the last three by an order of magnitude. It will.
Naturally, this comparison isn't meant to equate accusations of equipment tampering with accusations of rape and murder or mental destruction. The latter three are so vastly more repugnant, which is why you will hear about them as little as possible. That silence ultimately stems from the NFL's inevitable trajectory toward a vertically integrated entertainment-capital complex that also happens to include football. It is a spectacle machine and an ATM that reflects, promotes and admires itself. For all the talk of harsh gridiron realities, the NFL hasn't been in the reality business for a while. Reality is its enemy, and the Super Bowl—the largest spectacle of the game—is paradoxically its most vulnerable creation. It is an event ballooned so large that the slightest puncture threatens to send it deflating into a long, suffocating series of fatal escaping farts.
Four-point-five million dollars for that?" This is serious business, and we are seriously invested, regardless of the fact that this is the act of insane people—like bitching not about the existence of Muzak, but because your favorite shoegaze band isn't being played when the local cable company customer-service flunky puts you on hold.
At every step of the way, someone should laugh at this, and at every step of the way, every person involved in serving you this spectacle will completely fail to accomplish this basic human function. The NFL is all business at every given moment, because of that very serious $7 billion annual cost to the networks that broadcast it and are the primary source of "adversarial" journalism about it. On a workaday basis, this elevates insignificant bullshit like coaching and "game plans" to geopolitical high art, like two kids playing Risk thinking they are Talleyrand and Metternich about to vanquish Napoleon and establish the Concert of Europe.
When actual news breaks, the integration of the NFL as entertainment with its own reporting wing becomes unmistakable. At this point, Sports Illustrated's Peter King can't speak when NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is drinking a glass of water. ESPN's Adam Schefter initially responded to Goodell's preposterous two-game suspension of Ray Rice for knocking out his fiancée Janay by asking, "Was the Commissioner lenient enough?" There were, after all, the hundreds of thousands of people paying for fantasy leagues for whom Rice's existence manifested solely as someone Starting or Not Starting in the NFL.
Or consider NBC's broadcast of the divisional playoff game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New England Patriots. On raw audio, you could hear play-by-play man Al Michaels going over prepared comments about Goodell and his handling of the Rice domestic violence issue and the fatuous report by Robert Mueller. Following Michaels, color commentator Cris Collinsworth stated, "The decision initially to suspend Ray Rice for two games was a mistake, and the commissioner admitted that. But I never once in all my dealings with the commissioner doubted his integrity." He sounded like he was staring at a picture of a hooded man holding up a copy of that day's newspaper and a revolver to his son's head.
.........hit the link for more.
