It's a Guy Thing: A Visit from Football Dumbo/Legend Daryl Sanders...at Facebook

WWW--I'm on Facebook a lot (no shit Sherlock), one of many reasons I rarely post on here anymore, besides the fact that...oh, never mind.

Any reader of this blog will know that I'm adamantly iconoclastic, that I hold no sacred cows and that slaughtering them is something I excel at. Football (not the EU version, the real deal) is an American obsession to the point of being nauseating. Like baseball, it very openly wraps itself in "Old Glory," and doing so is the last refuge of scoundrels. Yes, Hunter S. Thompson was just as obsessed and it was something I could never relate to with him. I see it as a failing on his part and that of many Americans, it is a drug, literally, to socialize as well as to anesthetize the public.

Like a lot of self-destructive American institutions, I hope to live to watch it also bite the dust, and it's a roundly corporate one. People having fun is one thing. This shit isn't fun, it's a pathology.

It would hardly be the first time were I to observe that American football is equivalent to the "bread and circuses" of the Roman empire, it's literally a cliche at this point and obvious, something to take for granted. It is a distraction, one-of-many, but it's served a very central part in shaping the public mind since the 1920s, and is an adjunct to jingoism with its over-emphasis on competition, machismo, and a Manichean (us vs. them, black & white, etc.) worldview. What's more, and has many others have observed, George Carlin being a noteworthy example, football pushes a military mentality and is a cultural avatar of militarization. Anyone watching the coverage of the first Gulf War on CNN will know what I'm writing about here, but that scoreboard mentality could just as easily be applied to the current conflicts America's now mired down in. It's all part of the same moronic, wrong-headed Americanism that got us into Vietnam.

I have never, for one moment, entertained the bullshit surrounding the sport and find it unbelievably boring, as much as going to church, and that's what it really amounts to (or doesn't). This is literally institutionalized nationalist barbarism. The rest of the world fears us over how pathologically feral we are as a nation thanks to these cultural roots, never mind our entertainment output, enough to scare any normal human being into paralysis. But we're not a normal culture at all, we're a sick one, a degenerated settler state like many others. It's no surprise, then, that a sport like football is so popular here, even supported over our museums and cultural centers that are actually frequented more often.

And so, into this mix came me...and some asshole I only heard of over the years: Daryl Sanders, professional flag waver. Amazingly, he can walk upright and read and write, but his trainers had to use negative reinforcement therapy for all of that. Somehow, some way, some retard on Facebook got his ire up and thought he'd tap the "champ" (chump, chimp) to confront me over my opinions of the recent deaths of a helicopter filled with professionally trained assassins in Afghanistan. I apparently wasn't showing enough "respect" to these Einsatzgruppen-clones and he posted a comment on my wall, which was nice of him.

Next week I'll ask him to get groceries, mow the lawn, he's a rock and apparently does widow, a rarity these days. A hero isn't some oddly-shaped lummox who chases a ball around a field, little FYI. A hero is someone like Pat Tillman, a real man who wanted to protect his country, but also a dedicated leftist who wanted to go to Afghanistan to bear witness. He knew where America had been and wasn't a little child like Sanders, he was a real hero who was probably slaughtered by his fellow soldiers for seeing too much, like the fellow who recently reported the "kill team," another real hero. Heroes don't follow illegal orders. The resist, from inside of the military, putting their lives on the line in the truest sense, for the common good and the good of humanity.

That was Patrick Tillman. I don't even know or care if dumbo ever served, but members of my family did, so don't even go there, sunshine patriots.

Some of this bullshit goes back to John Wayne, a Californian (the genocide state, look at their constitution) college athlete in the 1920s who excelled at football, so much so that he landed a movie contract since if there's anything Americans value, it's the sport. That's called having your priorities out of order. "Wayne" (not his real name) became a wrong-headed icon of American manhood, machismo, just like Daryl Sanders, a little boy who I have to assume still thinks the Vietnam War "was a good idea." He also supports the illegal and genocidal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our point of entry. Sanders told me that I "have an odd sense of right and wrong." Oh really? Someone should really air-drop this piece of shit there and see if his over-sized ass could even make it out alive.

The fact is, those assassins who were killed weren't heroes, they were mindless killers who are paid to murder human beings in the service of private power, something Tillman grasped, making him that rarest of things, an intelligent and reflective American football player. Perhaps that's why he's dead and Sanders is still alive and will die at a ripe, old age. Heroes--real ones--don't live to old age, like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The system here finds some way to eliminate them or to wreck their lives. Daryl's an obedient lapdog, and so his taking-up-space ass will probably continue on, contributing more sickness to our culture. He's a disgusting little man, a joke, a fraud, but then, so are most football players and phony patriots.

The burning question of this socio-cultural-political moment...

Was the Vatican aware that Michael Jackson was a pedophile?

I know, I was floored by all the surprise surrounding the incontrovertible evidence that there are priests that molest children!! "What was the world coming to?" I thunk. Americans might want to face the fact that most mainstream journalism is barely different from the National Enquirer, and that's even unfair to them since they sometimes actually report something accurately for yucks.

Never mind that I had heard about pedophile priests almost my entire life and that even in predominantly Catholic South Bend (Notre Dame University is located adjacent to the city) it was considered a cliché. In this historical moment, "surprise" that the Vatican has been covering-up acts of molestation by clerics for decades is everywhere. Why is this? Surely, some of this is cry of the siren, but abusers need willing enablers and they've gotten plenty of enabling over generations. The point is a distraction for those who want the cover-ups and the lies to continue. Some of them are doing it because they can't bear what's going to come out of all of this. The public, as in all the other things that we're supposed to be "protected" from knowing, can take it, the culprits and enablers cannot.

What about protecting children? The Vatican seems to be the last institution on earth willing to do that besides the Republican Party or any other number of faceless, self-perpetuating institutions. That's a culture in very serious denial about itself and a real exorcism is order. An exorcism is, in fact, what's occurring in a scandal of international scope. The Church will continue to insist that they can take care of the problem, but since when have they illustrated an ability to? Centuries ago, the Church once had their own parallel legal system alongside that of the Monarch. Did it produce justice? It did not.

Their reluctance to be held accountable by civil law and authorities speaks volumes that they haven't changed very much at the Vatican, and Pope Benedict XVI is hardly a maverick for change as his own personal handling of past cases illustrates plainly. Like the American Republican Party, they're just going to keep blowing their toes off because they don't know any better and because they don't know what else to do. All they seem capable of is blaming the victim, the pedagogy of the abuser. That's not going to make it go away anytime soon.

The time Digger Phelps saved Christmas Eve (a true story)...

It was that special night--Christmas--and Zofia and her daddy were headed home through the back streets adjacent to Notre Dame's golf course and campus. The neighborhoods were built, in most cases, around the time of the Great War and its aftermath, mostly populated with professors, former Notre Dame coaches, and even a few celebrities, like the comedian Martin Short, a home he bought for his children while they attended the university's prestigious law school.

The law school itself is run by the notable Robert Blakey, former chair of the House Assassinations Committee that was convened in the late 1970s to investigate the killings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and John Kennedy.

But it had snowed and melted overnight before Zofia and her daddy went out to run errands for when grandma and her uncle were coming over to celebrate Christmas eve with them and they had forgotten how icy the neighborhoods could get! The moment they hit the patch of ice, it was over: they slid very quickly into one of the neighborhood yards; it was shocking and jarring, but they were alright when it was over. But they were stuck. What to do?

Help was on the way! A grumpy old man who appeared to have been born with a jelly-doughnut in his mouth ambled-up to the side of the car. Daddy had already gotten out. The man said nothing, just grunted, and motioned. He took the jelly-doughnut out his mouth and said, "Move it over that way and you'll be able to get out."Daddy did what the man said, and it worked. Daddy waved to the man with no response who was headed home, eating his jelly-doughnut he'd been born with. Funny how people can overcome their shadow side, being kind and grumpy all at the same time. Grumpy!

But the fact remains: Digger Phelps saved Christmas eve. Thank you Digger.

Coming soon: Digger Phelps saves Christmas eve!

South Bend, Indiana--A true, but very brief anecdote on the former N.D. coach saving the day!

You know you're from/in South Bend when...

You know you're from/in South Bend when you've missed every major social and cultural movement in the last forty years. Just sayin'!

You know you're from/in South Bend when you criticize aspects of it openly and are asked, "You from around here?"

You know you're from/in South Bend when Bobcat Goldthwait remarks how economically depressed it is at a show here, and it's when times were good.

You know you're from South Bend when you tell someone from another part of America you're from here, they don't understand, and you break down and say "Notre Dame." Then--and only then--do they "get" it.

You know you're in South Bend when the most exciting thing happening is a house on fire.

You know you're in South Bend when you realize that the most entertaining thing are the Snyders and the redneck disaster area that is Roseland, Indiana.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you realize that we have the finest homeless shelter in almost the entire continental United States, and that that's not necessarily a good thing.

You know you're from/in South Bend when 98% of the people you encounter here assume you're: Catholic, Polish, and a Notre Dame fan. Sydney Pollack was right.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you're aware that the poet James Whitcomb Riley lived here and that 99% of the local population do not.

You know you're from South Bend when you read the newspapers and read about the weekly drive-bys.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you see grown-men wearing spandex-tights that looked stupid in the 80s.

You know you're from/in South Bend when the South Bend Symphony Orchestra has yet to play very much 20th century music, and the 20th century is over. But, that's why you never go to see them, like everyone else.

You know you're from/in South Bend when most of the major industries here are housed in museums.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you're watching the outtakes from "This is Spinal Tap" and you notice that a character from South Bend is in it...and they're a total dork and a moron.

You know you're from/in South Bend when you realize very little ever changes here, and that Black people are almost the only people worth knowing. But: a beautiful place, just avoid the public and you'll be OK.

They're Running the Protect America Act Ads in Heavy-Rotation in Indiana

South Bend, Indiana--Lots-o'-goobers here, the slack-jawed, drooling, yammerin' kind, that's why. How much you want to bet that the shadowy group running it to pressure Rep. Joe Donnelly to vote for the retroactive immunity version are being funded with Defense Department funds illegally? Being very wishy-washy, dumbo Joe might actually cave-in, hence the other reason they're running it here. Sorry, the threat is being exaggerated, but we're used to that since the president and the GOP tried to cry wolf every time they were in-trouble...just like now.

Hoosiers: they spook easily like most "oogah-boogah" people descended from lynch mobs, but that doesn't mean everyone here was raised by a wild-pack of baptists...

One would think the primaries are already here, but these silly-ass ads are all about making sure there are no real revelations about the crimes of the White House, Congress, and the telecoms, and how much they spied on all of us illegally. They knew it was illegal, and they're lying that we need this stupid legislation with its retroactive immunity amendments for the telecommunications companies--they are unrelated issues. Get a warrant, it's that simple. If it isn't, resign from office.

We might even be able to add a new crime into our lexicon: white collar crime, committed under the color of government authority using data-mining techniques which are also illegal. Why are some Americans so chicken-shit? Come visit Indiana sometime, and you'll find out: poor education, willful ignorance, lazy conformity, religious fanaticism, and your basic poverty and lack of culture. The usual.

Michiana/Indiana's 2nd District: This area is a mixed-bag, and if I was to say the group of people that I like the most here, it would be the Black people. There are also a few good-ol'-boys who live around here who have hearts of gold, they're very tolerant of differences in others. There are farmers around here who really are wonderful people. The Catholic community here is the mixed-bag, because--with the obvious exceptions--they're not especially tolerant, and frequently very well-off.

Employers around here aren't any better or worse than anywhere else in America--take from that what you will. Wanton, senseless bigotry is prevalent, in a town where Notre Dame students rioted against the Klan around eighty-years-ago. This was once a stop-over on the underground railroad. My father discovered a system of tunnels on construction site dig once that was part of that network. Indiana is a mixed-bag.

Ed.-The shadowy group that ran the ads are called "The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies," of which Joe Lieberman is a founder. Newt Gingrich is alleged to be a founder as well. Their site is cagey on these matters: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/about_FDD/about_FDD_list.htm?attrib_id=7615