The Colt 45 Chronicle #84

Now that the Super Bowl has been played and football season is finally over, the New Year really begins. In a sense the real American New Year, the one that begins after the NFL has crowned a Super Bowl champion, is more in line with Chinese New Year, which is a week-and-a-half off, February 19, the Year of the Goat.

For me this new goat year is all about completion -- whittling, chiseling away at projects left unfinished; for instance, this Colt 45 Chronicle project. Begun in an emotional meltdown as the Seahawks were eliminated in the 2012 divisional round of the playoffs, I had intended to be finished with it by this year's Super Bowl. In fact, I made a pledge to that effect. Needless to say that pledge went unfulfilled. But since 2015 for me is going to be a stubborn goat-like display of dedication to completion, I am re-pledging to finish off the Colt 45 Chronicle in the next couple of months.

The Colt 45 Chronicle is a collection of letters I pulled out of storage at halftime of the playoff game in Atlanta where the Seahawks were getting their clock cleaned by the Falcons. Seattle came back in that game, and should have won, but the defense could not prevent Matt Ryan from connecting long to Roddy White, I believe it was, to set up the winning field goal by Matt Bryant.

I began posting these letters, which recount my first few years (at the end of the 1980s) in New York City where my wife and I had moved so she could attend medical school at Columbia University, shortly thereafter. It has taken me longer to re-type the letters and post them (over two years now) than it took to actually write them (18 months).

It is fitting that I finish these letters off now that Seattle failed to repeat as Super Bowl champs. The loss is a week old but it still pains me. I am worried that my original assessment is proving to be on the money -- that the appalling call to throw the ball on a slant over the middle, a ball that was intercepted, is going to be a Fisher King-like wound for the team going forward. I still wake up each morning thinking, "My God. We should have won that Super Bowl." Mostly, I feel bad for the young men, for Marshawn Lynch. He was deprived his just designation as one of the all-time greats. And for that I am angry at the decision of the coaches -- Darrell Bevel, Pete Carroll -- to make such a risky, poor call.

We're primates; we have this thing about justice, about fairness. The outcome to Super Bowl XLIX continues to cause emotional heartburn because it was foolishly unjust.

At the office we still have a wall plastered with the color photo spreads that appeared in the Seattle Times going back to the Thanksgiving-night shellacking of the San Francisco 49ers. Each week, either I or the business manager of the local, would post the new photo spread up on the wall. It is an impressive display. The last spread to go up on the wall is a full body shot of Marshawn Lynch, obviously in a lot of distress, walking off the field in Arizona with his helmet in his hand, a grimace on his face and his head cocked to the side and slightly downcast. The caption reads in something like 50-point type, "WHAT IF?"

So onward we go, into the Year of the Goat, a year for completion.

The letter below describes my first day as a temporary inventory clerk at Lane Bryant, a plus-size women's clothing company. I remember the building was a high rise on 42nd Street across the street from the New York Public Library.

These letters usually break down into two categories: 1) some sort of description of life in the Big Apple, and 2) wailing and moaning that my university life is over. Both are on display in this letter, the latter in the form of a drunken stream-of-consciousness poem.

Summer 1989

Well, I just wanted to write and say hello, keep the line the alive. I got your post card from Palm Springs back in March. Shit, it's July already, and I still don't have steady work. But what I have had is a bunch of crummy temporary jobs since I left California in January. I started out in February doing inventory for LANE BRYANT, a clothier of large woman. I was working at their big New York headquarters. I was working in hosiery. It was on the 9th floor. They had hired half a dozen of us temporaries to count up the number of socks and underwear ordered by the 240 nationwide LANE BRYANT stores. Two hundred and forty stores, and I hadn't even heard of them before.

The first day I reported in I had a hangover, and I don't think I had showered. While I was in the lobby I caught a peek of myself in a mirror. Ouch. My face was the color of dish water, except for under my eyes, and that was charcoal black; my hair was glued to my head; my clothes looked like I had fished them, shit stained, out of the middle of the street. I was wearing my Red Wings, and they were old and scuffed. I had a tie on but I don't think it helped much, just a beer-o trying to dress up.

The supervisor finally came and escorted me down a brown-carpeted hall. I liked her. Her name was Rosa. She spoke to me like I was a person and not some animal to scold and flick matches on. She looked old, worn, but there was something young and beautiful about her. She was nice.

After a few turns and a flight of stairs and a few more turns, she led me into a room. Before me stood a big conference table. It covered the length of the room, and the room was pretty damn long. Around the table sat six or seven black faces. They looked at me as if to say, "What are you doing here? Why aren't you out making the real money?"

I walked to the other end of the room and sat down. Rosa sat down a few feet away at the head of the table. She pulled out a pack of mentholated cigarettes and lit one up. It was a 100, really sweet and long. It smelled sharp and chemical and good.

I looked down the table, all nice faces except for one guy. Good, only one asshole. Rosa told me to wait, that the person who would tell me what to do would be there soon. She said that she wasn't my supervisor; that my supervisor would be in soon; that she supervised half the people and that the other woman supervised the other half.

****

Halfway home and nowhere to go.

Blood should be greasing my rhythm. 

Nice idea; live it, motherfucker. 

At least dreams are for free -- thanks to the MINUTEMEN

Life is only lived when you're young 

And then after you're young, you got to write about it. 

That's the only way you can keep your youth and your whimsy 

To think that you're writing it 

What a tragedy 

We are dead after 6th grade

Some Thoughts on the Super Bowl and the U.S. Failed State

It was a rough night last night. A die-hard Seahawks fan, I kept waking up in the middle of the night with a thought as large as a billboard painted on a downtown high rise filling my head, "Why not run Lynch?" With less than a minute to go in the Super Bowl, the ball on the Patriots one-yard line, the Seahawks had three downs to let Beast Mode punch it into the end zone. Then, inexplicably, a pass play over the middle was called. Undrafted cornerback Malcom Butler jumped it, bumped in front of Ricardo Lockette and intercepted Russell Wilson. After a fight breaks out during New England's kneel down, game over. Patriots win.

I've seen Pete Carroll's explanation of the play call. He stands by it; says it made sense since the Patriots had their run-stopping defense on the field. But why throw such a risky pass, one where Russell Wilson is basically tossing the ball into the middle of the scrum? It was a shocking, appalling decision, one that is going to haunt the team for a long time. In that one play Carroll and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell cost the Seahawks not only back-to-back championships, but first-ballot Hall of Fame status to Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson.

Such a gaffe will follow the Seahawks all off-season. More than likely, it will take on a Fisher-King-like status for the players, a wound that won't heal and that will poison the franchise. Winning is mental and so is losing. Ask Tom Brady. It could be a long time before Russell Wilson gets back to the Super Bowl.

A gloomy silence descended upon my neighborhood. Where last year there were drunken cries of ecstasy, car honks, spontaneous rallies on Broadway following Seattle's shellacking of Denver; this year there was a funereal stillness and weighted hush. I put away the leftovers of my Super Bowl meal (Thai red curry with coconut milk, tofu, zucchini and potato) and went to bed a little after 7:30 PM.

Once there I realized that really the Seahawks loss was poetic justice. After improbably defeating Green Bay in overtime of the NFC Championship, they shot themselves in the foot in the Super Bowl. The offense blew it, but it was really the celebrated Seattle defense who couldn't stop Brady in the red zone in the fourth quarter that cost the Seahawks their second championship. Seattle's one red zone stop -- Jeremy Lane's interception of Brady in the first quarter -- is probably the real reason the Seahawks lost. Lane injured his wrist running back the interception, and Brady ended up skewering his replacement, Tharold Simon, for the rest of the game. Simon gave up two touchdowns, one the game-winner to Julian Edelman. So, as I say, some poetic justice.

I tried to take my mind off the game and fall asleep. I thought about a story, "G.O.P. Campaigns Scramble to Add Romney Donors," by Nicholas Confessore that appeared on Saturday. It used to be that campaign stories having to do with a presidential race were about building organizations in early primary and caucus states like New Hampshire and Iowa; that, and positions on issues and policies, and maybe endorsements. Now it is about who has the most bundlers and billionaire donors. Issues are an afterthought. The voters -- their desires -- aren't even mentioned. This is what it has come to post-Citizens United, and we pretty much have grown to accept it.

The position of this page is that such a situation cannot be maintained for too much longer without a serious shock to the system. The planned Netanyahu appearance before Congress in March is one indication that the system is breaking down. It is completely unprecedented for Congress -- in this case, Speaker of the House John Boehner -- to invite the leader of a foreign country, Israel, to address it against the wishes of the White House.

If Netanyahu goes ahead with the appearance, it will be something of a soft coup. Congress will establish the precedent that it can conduct its own foreign policy separate from the executive branch. The issue at stake here is no less than a war against Iran.

In "A Strained Alliance: Obama-Netanyahu Rift Grew Over Years," by Peter Baker and Jodi Rudoren, Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledges that Netanyahu, who knows U.S. politics very well, has written off Obama:

Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior State Department official, said it looked like Mr. Netanyahu has concluded that he would rather take his chances with the Republican Congress even at the expense of his already tense relationship with Mr. Obama. 

“I really do think it represents a strategic calculation that from Israel’s point of view, this president and this White House have essentially been written off,” Mr. Haass said. “Particularly since the midterm elections, they have made the calculation that to the extent possible, they will use Congress as the channel to conduct their relationship.” 

Efraim Halevy, a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said that calculation was made clear in December when Israel offered no public support for Mr. Obama’s decision to resume diplomatic relations with Cuba, a move he attributed to a desire not to alienate Republicans. “Israel is now placing its bets on one side of the aisle,” Mr. Halevy said. “I think it’s a mistake.”

Israel is not even bothering with the White House anymore. Obama is the lamest of lame ducks. When NBC's Savannah Guthrie chatted yesterday with Obama in the White House kitchen prior to the Super Bowl, he looked like a guy merely marking time getting ready to clock out. Pale, frail, juiceless, Obama delivered his lines as if he didn't care whether people believed them or not. He'll probably maintain a residence in Chicago and one in Hawaii once he closes out his term, free to read and write and watch his daughters marry and raise families.

In the meantime, things will continue to deteriorate in the United States. Dollarocracy will reign supreme. Voter turnout will continue to drop as income inequality soars. Eventually, actively fighting wars in too many countries -- Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Ukraine, Yemen, Venezuela, you name it -- will be the country's undoing.

In Praise of Marshawn Lynch: Dave Zirin Contrasts Beast Mode with NFL Commissioner Goodell

I have always felt a connection to Marshawn Lynch. It probably has something to do with the fact that we both went to Berkeley. Fortunately, the year or two I was in the habit of watching college football on Saturdays (usually hung over) corresponded to the time when Lynch was running for the Golden Bears. What impressed me about Lynch in those Cal games was his speed, his power -- yes, absolutely -- but more than anything it was his ability to absorb huge hits and keep on going. Remarkable, noteworthy, unusual.

I loathed the Holmgren/Hasselbeck Seahawks. So when Pete Carroll made a trade with Buffalo to bring Lynch to town my opinion of the team did a 180. I was quickly made a believer in the franchise.

Make no mistake. Marshawn Lynch turned the franchise around, helped remake it into something entirely unique. That's why it is nice to see Beast Mode getting the superstar treatment in the run up to Super Bowl Sunday. So powerful is his starshine that it has nearly erased everything else this week -- Tom Brady, Deflategate, Bob Kraft's Patriots, you name it. It has been all Marshawn.

It will be interesting to see if the baleful brainiac Belichik will bite down on the hook and structure his defensive game plan around stopping Lynch. This is what most teams do. And this is the brier patch which Seattle loves to lead opponents; it is how Seattle wins games. With defenses keying on Lynch, Russell Wilson makes the big moves. Russell Wilson might not be your classic drop-back passer, but he is brilliant running an offense where he is not the main attraction.

Speaking of main attraction, Dave Zirin latest piece, Marshawn Lynch and Roger Goodell: Compare and Contrast, is a brilliant exploration of the relative merits to the National Football League offered by its chief executive and one of its star players. I quote it in its entirety.

 Go Seahawks! To Victory!

Marshawn Lynch and Roger Goodell: Compare and Contrast 

Dave Zirin on January 27, 2015 - 8:43 PM ET

Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell have something glaringly obvious in common. They both struggle mightily speaking on camera. That, however, is where the similarities end.

Marshawn Lynch, who thousands of people pay to watch play on Sundays, earned a base salary of $6 million last year.* Roger Goodell, who no fan would put down money to do anything other than perhaps be hooked up to a lie detector, made $44 million.

Marshawn Lynch is financially forced by the league to talk to the media, ideally to mouth the same clichés every other player is hardwired to repeat. He spoke at the Super Bowl Media Day this week and twenty-nine times repeated seven words that speak the truth of a league that demands players to double as corporate pitchmen: “I’m here so I won’t get fined.” If Lynch hadn’t made an appearance, he would have faced a gobsmacking $500,000 fine.

Roger Goodell is under no obligation to talk to the public, even though he oversees a league that has received billions in corporate welfare and whose central office is designated by the federal government as a tax-free nonprofit. As Richard Sherman, Marshawn Lynch’s teammate who has never been uncomfortable in front of a microphone, said, Lynch should not be obligated to speak “any more than the commissioner is obligated to speak.”

Marshawn Lynch has also been fined $20,000 by the NFL for grabbing his crotch, which is Lynch’s customary move when he scores a particularly explosive touchdown. Roger Goodell’s league sells a framed collage that includes the very image of Lynch tugging his testicles for $149.95. While Lynch writes checks, Goodell profits on both ends, while also perhaps grabbing his junk.

Marshawn Lynch, who it’s been theorized by friends has a social anxiety disorder, is mocked mercilessly by the media for his lack of desire to speak to them and his inability to sound like Peyton Manning. Roger Goodell, whose only disorder is inordinate blushing when challenged, receives no such casual barbs. He has actually felt some media heat this year over his years of covering up cases of domestic violence. Yet despite every misstep, he was still praised by on a primetime NFL playoff broadcast by announcers Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth for his “integrity” and making domestic violence “part of the national conversation.” (This is, as I’ve written elsewhere, like praising Goldman Sachs for making corporate greed “part of the national conversation.”)

Richard Sherman put it perfectly in a piece he wrote this week for Sports Illustrated. “Under Goodell the league continues to put players like Marshawn Lynch in a position to be mocked by the media, which seems to get a kick out of seeing people struggle on camera. As teammates we’re angry because we know what certain people do well and we know what they struggle with. Marshawn’s talking to the press is the equivalent of putting a reporter on a football field and telling him to tackle Adrian Peterson.”

Sherman also pointed out exactly why so many players—particularly black players—hold a hostility toward an older contemptuous sports media, writing, “Some of the same people slamming Marshawn for not talking are just as likely to condemn the Browns’ Andrew Hawkins and Johnson Bademosi for protesting police brutality with T-shirts. They want to hear us speak, but only if we’re saying something they want to hear.”

There is one last similarity between both men: they both generate gobs of money for the thirty-one billionaires that run the league. The difference however is that Marshawn Lynch will be thrown on the scrapheap as soon as he no longer has the ability to perform. Roger Goodell continues to be paid long after he has proven in practice that he is a liability to players, their families, and the future of the league. I would love to be able to pull off a “Lucy and Ricky” scenario and for one week, start Roger Goodell at running back for the Seahawks and put Marshawn Lynch in the Commissioner’s chair. Seattle would surely suffer. The league, however, would register an immediate improvement. If nothing else, on game day, we’d all get a whole lotta Skittles.

NFL Week 22: Super Bowl XLIX

Sunday's Super Bowl in Arizona is about as classic a match-up as anyone could hope for. On one side you have the apotheosis of the corporate machine led by the evil genius Bill Belichik and his telegenic, super-model-marrying, duplicitous matinee idol quarterback Tom Brady. On the other side you have the young, fresh, beautiful, black free men led by the sprightly Pete Carroll and his acerbic, cerebral cornerback Richard Sherman.

Sherman made news when he accused National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell of a conflict of interest. Answering a question about Deflategate (also referred to as "Ballghazi"), Sherman said don't expect any punishment to be forthcoming when Goodell is hanging out socially with Patriots owner Robert Kraft. According to ESPN's Jeff Legwold ("Carroll: Sherman expressing opinion"):

Sunday, shortly after the Seahawks' arrival in Arizona, Sherman said he didn't believe the Patriots would be punished if they were found to have adjusted the air pressure in 11 footballs prior to last Sunday's AFC Championship Game.

Sherman cited a photograph that included Goodell and Kraft from a party at Kraft's house the night before the AFC Championship Game, a photo that was then posted to the Patriots' official Twitter account: 

"Will they be punished? Probably not," Sherman said. "Not as long as Robert Kraft and Roger Goodell are still taking pictures at their respective homes. You talk about conflict of interest. As long as that happens, it won't affect them at all. Nothing will stop them."

Dave Zirin picked up on Sherman's comment in a blog post yesterday, "Patriots Balls and Christopher Hitchens":

This conflict of interest is very real. As GQ’s Gabriel Sherman wrote in a damning long read that dropped this week about Goodell, Kraft is apparently known among NFL execs as “the assistant commissioner.” Even this description is charitable. It’s less the relationship between an assistant and a commissioner as much as it is one between a hand and the bottom aperture of a puppet. Bob Kraft, in addition to being just a “friend of Goodell,” has been the great defender of Goodell’s stunning $44 million salary. He was Goodell’s first defender during the release of information that showed that the NFL cared very little about domestic violence until tape went public of Ray Rice striking his wife Janay. He also, according to GQ, orchestrated Goodell’s disastrous defense of the NFL’s domestic violence policies, in conjunction with CBS network who was about to start airing its lucrative Thursday night NFL telecasts. Kraft ordered Goodell to speak to CBS and grant an interview to, in Kraft’s insistence “a woman,” who ended up being Norah O’Donnell. Goodell complied.

Drew Magary wrote, in analyzing the league’s deep concern with the optics of this, “[Y]ou can see that NFL higher-ups were far more concerned with LOOKING like they were handling domestic violence appropriately than actually doing so (cut to Eli Manning in a No More ad looking like you just told him that we’ve run out of cupcakes).

This relationship with Bob Kraft and the mere appearance of impropriety that marks how Goodell handles every issue that crosses his desk, tells its own story about why he must go. A reckless incompetence now defines everything he touches, whether it is his enforcing of the rules, the health and safety of players, or his dealings with the union. Instead of acting—like his predecessor Paul Tagliabue—as even the mildest of checks on the grasping of the bosses, he is their id unleashed. Instead of listening to players, Goodell is so comically distanced from the reality of his own ineptitude that he has become the sports version of Yertle the Turtle.

Zirin hopes that Deflategate proves to be Goodell's undoing. I think Sherman's comments will prove to be on the mark. Nothing will happen. Already the media has moved on to former Seahawks now Patriots cornerback Brandon Browner  and his statement that New England should go after the less-than-100%-healthy Sherman and free safety Earl Thomas and try to knock them out of the game.

And I'm sure this is what the Patriots will do. I was a die-hard 49ers fan in the Bill Walsh era. In the 1980s a premiere rivalry in the National Football League was between the San Francisco 49ers and the New Giants. Bill Parcells coached the Giants; his defensive coordinator was Bill Belichik. Belichik's tenure as chief architect of those defenses led by Lawrence Taylor, Leonard Marshall, Harry Carson and Carl Banks established him in the league. Belichik had a reputation among the 49ers for encouraging cheap shots, dirty play.

Of course I never forgot this. And subsequently I always considered Belichik teams to be the foulest and most conniving.

Who could root for a Belichik team particularly with his philosophy that all players are expendable? Isn't the point about giving your allegiance to a team is that there is something special, unique, transcendent about the players? Not according to Belichik. To Belichik players are just so many interchangeable widgets; that is why free agency bulks so large on his teams (think Randy Moss).

Consider it this way: Russell Wilson would never start on a Belichik team. Too small. Maybe, if Brady went down, Wilson might see some time in relief, but never would he be given run of the offense. Also consider Belichik's disdain for star running backs. Belichik believes running backs are a dime a dozen, easily replaced and largely indistinguishable. He never would allow a free, package-grabbing man like Marshawn Lynch the all-important role he has on the Seahawks offense.

What makes Pete Carroll the polar opposite of Bill Belichik is that rather than scheming and cheating and searching for any and every advantage in the X's and O's Carroll is sensitive to the intangibles, the spirit world. Carroll sees and knows that athletics are about the organic unity of team play, positive energy, a will to win and the human spirit. Belichik's corporate slavery is the exact opposite.

Then there is the issue of race. The Seahawks are a black team full of young black men who are incredible leaders. I speak here of Kam Chancellor, Richard Sherman, Earl Thomas, Marshawn Lynch, Russell Wilson. Free men. Black men. The Patriots are team with more whites than most. Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Danny Amendola, Julian Edelman, Rob Ninkovich.

Carroll has complained in the past that the Seahawks are singled out by the league, and that is why they are called for so many penalties. I think it is because the Seahawks represent a threat to the institutional racism of corporate America.

So for the future, for free men, for Black Lives Matter, for athleticism over trickery, for human spirit over corporate dominance, for Carroll over Belichik, for Richard Sherman over Tom Brady -- take the Seahawks!

Present-Day Politics as Seen Through the Prism of the NFL Conference Championship Games

A few quick hits this morning. First, from yesterday's Water Cooler by Lambert Strether:

From the Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are? As Matt Stoller has shown, the growth of income inequality under Obama is greater than that under Bush. And only now, when there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of their “proposals” passing — very unlike 2008-2009, when the Democrats had the House, the Senate, the greatest orator of our time in the White House, a mandate for “hope and change,” and their boot on the thoroughly discredited Republican neck — the Democrats are 
closing the barn door after the horse is gonecoming all over populist, while simultaneously trying to fast track TPP with Republican help. Help me.

Well said. Second, from Dave Zirin's blog post yesterday, "Deflated Balls for Some, Miniature American Flags for Others!":

Contrast the faith people project onto sports with the utter absence of credulity we give politics. Why were people talking more about deflated balls than President Obama’s State of the Union address? I imagine it’s because unless you are someone who sees Beltway politics as a form of entertainment, or a DC insider consuming and analyzing every last optic, you would have to be Shirley Temple to feel like anything said by the president, no matter how artfully articulated, connects with your life. We were told the economy is booming, yet household income for the middle and working classes is still far below pre-2008 crisis levels because of stagnant wages. We were told that a tax on the 1 percent and free childcare was on the agenda, yet a hostile Congress makes those promises about as realistic as hoverboards for all. We were told that the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, yet the facts—and boots—on the ground tell a different story. We were told that it was time to come together and see both sides on questions of police violence, yet protesters were being targeted in Ferguson while the president was speaking.

Meanwhile, we saw the Patriots kick the snot out of the Colts and we saw the Seahawks have as wild a fourth-quarter comeback as I’ve ever seen to beat the Green Bay Packers. We want to believe that this—if nothing else—represents a tangible truth. Frightening as it is to consider, sports might be our last collective tether to a recognizable reality. If people feel like Bill Belichick has taken that away, it will affect his legacy and this sport, more than a thousand instances of Roger Goodell looking like he has the moral compass of a feral raccoon. It’s sad. It’s pathetic. But it’s also understandable. We can only work with the world we’re given, and it’s a place where the trust in institutions of power is more deflated that any damn balls. 

Absolutely.

Since the return to work from the holiday weekend talk has centered on the improbable, historic NFC Championship comeback of the home-team Seahawks. Coworkers come up and tell me their experiences. I listen. One guy I work with told me the story about how he and his wife were watching the game and finally the wife had had enough; she couldn't take it anymore; Green Bay's domination seemed unbreakable; so she left to run errands. When she was out and about she heard shouts and wails of ecstasy coming from homes. Finally, she picked a random door, knocked and asked what was happening. A couple drinking Champagne told her to get inside quick. The Seahawks had just won in overtime.

The guy who heads the union where I work was back East for a conference with members of the local's executive board. They were in Atlanta waiting for a flight back to Seattle, watching the game at an airport bar when the Seahawks began their 4th quarter comeback. He said that they turned into a bunch of "little girls," crying, shrieking, jumping up and down.

A lot of different stories. One guy, a lineman, was working a call-out for a storm that was going on while the NFC Championship was being played. He ended up working a couple days straight, but he returned home for three hours to watch the game with his son, an authentic Seahawks helmet on the coffee table in front of the television.

Zirin is right, "Frightening as it is to consider, sports might be our last collective tether to a recognizable reality." It is frightening because all that collective passion that ties us together in community is part of a privately-held corporate behemoth (except for the Green Bay Packers), which, if I'm not mistaken, fits the definition of fascism.

But as another National Football League season draws to a close and Super Bowl XLIX beckons, I don't feel diminished by my part -- the many hours in front of the television being force fed wireless plans, Toyotas and Taco Bell -- because it is our primary reference, one that spans race and class and gender, in present-day society. The elemental effort of a Marshawn Lynch carrying half-a-dozen tacklers down the middle of the field or a Richard Sherman playing with one arm tucked against his ribs wiggling his fingers to try to get the sensation back while he continues to make tackles -- that seems real to me and to millions of others, a humanity that cannot be denied and buried beneath the enormous weight of a bloated, tottering, corrupt capitalist system.

As Zirin says, "We can only work with the world we’re given, and it’s a place where the trust in institutions of power is more deflated that any damn balls." U.S special forces are running black ops in over 100 countries, and the Obama administration is considering expansion of another sectarian Middle East war, which will lead to another failed state and more military expenditures. Eventually these chickens will come home to roost.

The political class is increasingly disconnected -- free floating -- from the people, the governed. The people have football, which is still honest. So your average person at least has a commitment to honesty, which is more than can be said about the political class. One can hope that when the masses decide to glance up from the television and cast their gaze upon the political class they will reject its dishonesty and bellicosity. But what is it going to take? And when is it going to happen?

I think we're going to find out in the next few years.