The American Conservative<\/a>:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 NFL Commissioner Roger \u201cDon\u2019t Touch Me I Bruise Easily\u201d Goodell has promised to \u201cunfurl patriotic themes\u201d at each stadium.\u00a0 Huge American flags that cover the entire playing field being waggled by platoons of soldiers in combat fatigues are becoming pass\u00e9, 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
And to hell with the singing of the National Anthem, all that complicated rockets\u2019 red glare stuff.\u00a0 Fans can be given cards with a new loyalty oath which they will be required to recite or face expulsion from the stadium.\u00a0 The oath will include a pledge to provide one\u2019s first born for the next war wherever that might be and whenever the White House considers it appropriate.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 After the game is over, everyone present will be either groped or irradiated, depending on which option comes out on top.\u00a0 It would be like reality TV and sports combined.<\/p>\n
And then the piece de resistance.\u00a0 At the end of a game a line of Taliban prisoners can be paraded along the top wall of the stadium.\u00a0 A prisoner will be tossed into the parking lot for each touchdown that was scored in the game while the crowd chants \u201cWe have always been at war with Eurasia!\u201d If no touchdowns are scored, one prisoner will be tossed anyway\u00a0to show the Afghans that we mean business.\u00a0 America has never lost a war.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-11400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11400"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11408,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11400\/revisions\/11408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11400"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}