The National Football League, which almost went dark this season because the front office and NFLPA couldn’t agree on the terms of their players’ gazillion-dollar contracts, is launching its 2011 season on Sunday, the 10-year mark of the 9/11 attacks. If the very idea of this corporate Mothra appropriating what should be a day of sobering reflection and turning it into a garish, steroidal display of misfiring American exceptionalism, you are not alone. Luckily, Antiwar’s Phil Giraldi provides some cathartic relief and a helpful assist for a triumphal season opening:
Re-posted from The American Conservative:
The confluence of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the first full day of the 2011 National Football League season is sure to be a treat. NFL Commissioner Roger “Don’t Touch Me I Bruise Easily” Goodell has promised to “unfurl patriotic themes” at each stadium. Huge American flags that cover the entire playing field being waggled by platoons of soldiers in combat fatigues are becoming passé, as are the by now yawn inducing flyovers by F-16s, so I would propose that the cash rich and morally challenged NFL work with the Department of Defense to do something really spectacular. Surely an American flag that covers the entire stadium can and should be considered to remind everyone that the Federal government is there like an enormous security blanket to protect honest folk who like to go out and get drunk and swear a lot between the increasingly rare plays on the field. Dick Cheney can supervise the coin toss at the start of the game and will hand out free copies of his book to the team captains.
And to hell with the singing of the National Anthem, all that complicated rockets’ red glare stuff. Fans can be given cards with a new loyalty oath which they will be required to recite or face expulsion from the stadium. The oath will include a pledge to provide one’s first born for the next war wherever that might be and whenever the White House considers it appropriate. Government in action might be highlighted by a Transportation Security Agency live simulation up on the food tier in which fans can vote on what kind of security screening they would prefer. After the game is over, everyone present will be either groped or irradiated, depending on which option comes out on top. It would be like reality TV and sports combined.
And then the piece de resistance. At the end of a game a line of Taliban prisoners can be paraded along the top wall of the stadium. A prisoner will be tossed into the parking lot for each touchdown that was scored in the game while the crowd chants “We have always been at war with Eurasia!” If no touchdowns are scored, one prisoner will be tossed anyway to show the Afghans that we mean business. America has never lost a war.
