Collateral Damage

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost it’s way

War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away
War, children, it’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It’s just a shot away
It’s just a shot away

- The Rolling Stones: Gimme Shelter

If Mick Jagger and the boys had any balls left whatsoever they would have opened the garish free market capitalist travesty that was the Super Bowl XL halftime show with the roiling menace of their classic Gimme Shelter followed by Sympathy for the Devil and Street Fighting Man despite their pre-arranged set. Once the anal retentive fuck-sticks who run the heavily censored corporate media were able to scrape their jaws off of the control room floor would they have cut the power to the entire set? If a line like "you can make a dead man come" is too provocative for the childlike minds of the year’s biggest infomercial what would a triple barreled blast of pure sixties rebellion do? A nation obsessed with graphic details about fucking but adverse to any similar graphic details about dying ugly….especially when the dying occurs in an illegal foreign war of intervention that is far more complicated than the bunting draped patiotic horseshit that is now so ubiquitious at national sporting events and other hoohah that distracts the simple minded.

In Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Slaughterhouse Five he uses the books of a fictional science fiction writer named Kilgore Trout to insert social commentary into his overall story. One of ‘Trout’s’ tales addressed the strange contradictions of a society that will accept with open arms one who kills civilians with state sanction during wartime while ostracizing one for silly, superficial reasons:

The Gutless Wonder: This, too, was the title of a book by Trout, The Gutless Wonder. It was about a robot who had bad breath, who became popular after his halitosis was cured. But what made the story remarkable, since it was written in 1932, was that it predicted the widespread use of burning jellied gasoline on human beings. It was dropped on them from airplanes. Robots did the dropping. They had no conscience, and no circuits which would allow them to imagine what was happening to the people on the ground.Trout's leading robot looked like a human being, and could talk and dance and so on, and go out with girls. And nobody held it against him that he dropped jellied gasoline on people. But they found his halitosis unforgivable. And then he cleared that up, and he was welcomed to the human race.

Vonnegut of course was present at Dresden on the night that allied bombers laid waste to the ‘Florence of the Elbe’, a historic city as well as a non-military target with little or no air defense system that was packed with refugees and prisoners and was targeted by bombers that incinerated over one hundred thousand civilians. Vonnegut spoke of seeing the boiled bodies of schoolgirls floating in a water tower through his character Billy Pilgrim and also of being forced to dig through the wreckage in the aftermath to find "corpse mines" and described the odor of the bodies:


“They didn’t smell bad at first…but then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses and mustard gas”He also spoke of a character, another soldier who died of the dry heaves from having to go down into a corpse mine and being overcome by the stench:

“He tore himself to pieces, throwing up and throwing up”

Dresden doesn’t get much mention when it comes to our nation’s war history, neither does the decimation of the Japanese homeland by bombing of civilian areas nor the bombing of Viet Nam nor the brown skinned dead in any other foreign imperialist adventure undertaken by the politicians and their wealthy backers who cash in on the destroyed lives and flesh of those who become victims so that they may live opulent lives of carefree exploitation. I do want to make the statement that in doing so I am differentiating between ‘combatants’ and what is deemed to be acceptable ‘collateral damage’ to those dropping their bombs or launching their shells and missiles from far away lest they actually have to bear witness to the devastation. ‘Trout’s’ Gutless Wonder is a perfect metaphor for the apathetic and cruel philistines who allow for the murder of innocents to take place in their name as long as it doesn’t intrude upon their pathetic and selfish little lives.

I want to at this time take an opportunity to recognize it here for the sake of the memory of the dead and perhaps the hope of the living that we can one day finally recognize war for the profitable, industrialized slaughter that it is by listing a few accounts:

“The firestorm is incredible, there are calls for help and screams from somewhere but all around is one single inferno. To my left I suddenly see a woman. I can see her to this day and shall never forget it. She carries a bundle in her arms. It is a baby. She runs, she falls, and the child flies in an arc into the fire. Suddenly, I saw people again, right in front of me. They scream and gesticulate with their hands, and then - to my utter horror and amazement - I see how one after the other they simply seem to let themselves drop to the ground. (Today I know that these unfortunate people were the victims of lack of oxygen). They fainted and then burnt to cinders.” (Margaret Freyer: Dresden Resident)

“The elephants gave spine-chilling screams. The baby cow elephant was lying in the narrow barrier-moat on her back, her legs up in the sky. She had suffered severe stomach injuries and could not move. A 90 cwt. cow elephant had been flung clear across the barrier moat and the fence by some terrific blast wave, and stood there trembling. I had no choice but to leave these animals to their fate. I had known for one hour now that the most difficult task could ever bring was facing me. "Lehmann, we must get to the carnivores," I called. We did what we had to do, but it broke my heart.” (Otto Sailer-Jackson: Dresden Zookeeper)


"We did not recognize our street any more. Fire, only fire wherever we looked. Our 4th floor did not exist anymore. The broken remains of our house were burning. On the streets there were burning vehicles and carts with refugees, people, horses, all of them screaming and shouting in fear of death. I saw hurt women, children, old people searching a way through ruins and flames. We fled into another cellar overcrowded with injured and distraught men women and children shouting, crying and praying. No light except some electric torches. And then suddenly the second raid began. This shelter was hit too, and so we fled through cellar after cellar. Many, so many, desperate people came in from the streets. lt is not possible to describe! Explosion after explosion. It was beyond belief, worse than the blackest nightmare. So many people were horribly burnt and injured. lt became more and more difficult to breathe. lt was dark and all of us tried to leave this cellar with inconceivable panic. Dead and dying people were trampled upon, luggage was left or snatched up out of our hands by rescuers. The basket with our twins covered with wet cloths was snatched up out of my mothers hands and we were pushed upstairs by the people behind us. We saw the burning street, the falling ruins and the terrible firestorm. My mother covered us with wet blankets and coats she found in a water tub". (Lothar Metzger: Dresden Resident)


Among other things Vonnegut later wrote:

"You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."

And of course he is correct, the dropping of Fat Man and Little Boy and whether it was ultimately necessary against a broken enemy or was merely an opening gambit in the Cold War will be debated until the end of our days but the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will always be interpreted by most as necessary steps to end a long, cruel and far too bloody war and to spare even more American casualites. I can even see the validity of this argument although I am not a convert but these were only two events, albeit massive in the systematic destruction and the breaking of the will of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Regarding the bombing of Japan an excellent resource would be Errol Morris’ fine film the Fog of War during which he interviews at length former Secretary of Defense and Viet Nam war architect Robert McNamara who was Rumsfeld before Rumsfield in his arrogance. The film while not depicting the slaughter on the ground offered a glimpse into the methodology of industrialized mass murder. General Curtis LeMay, McNamara's superior and the commander of the Twenty-First Bomber Command that devastated the Japanese Home Islands in the late days of the war plays a prominent part. In the film McNamara explains his role in the incendiary attack by chillingly reducing it to the banality of number crunching as to the potential casualty tally. LeMay, who was savagely lampooned in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove as General Jack D. Ripper who kicks off nuclear Armageddon is featured in actual film clips that are among the most interesting parts of the movie.


In a precursor to modern corporate number crunching the bombing run efficiency was maximized to the point where stripped B-29s were sent in flying so low that they literally reeked of burning flesh, a good and short although militaristic account on LeMay and the bombing has been written by Victor Davis Hanson and entitled The Right Man, this piece is featured in the World War II compilation called No End Save Victory, a pretty good book of essays that you could likely pick up cheap online. The ruthless efficiency of the incendiary bombings even had LeMay himself to comment that “I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal”.

"On the nights of March 9 and 10 in 1945 Tokyo was subjected to an incredible incendiary bombardment that destroyed sixteen square miles of the city, boiling asphalt and cooking flesh. Although the true number will never be known it is estimated that nearly 100,000 were killed, most incinerated and most civilians including women and children and the helpless elderly. The fire consumed the city structures that were mainly built out of wood and the heat", according to Nicholas Von Hoffman as published in Pat Buchanan’s Where The Right Went Wrong “boiled the water in lakes and ponds, cooking those who fled to safety there like human lobsters” But this is always the way that it is in war isn’t it? General LeMay was correct, the victors are never the war criminals and never the terrorists, the infamy as well as the true costs of agrression are not ultimately paid by the warmongers but suffered by the poor bastards who just happen to live under the rule of rogue governments or those that otherwise fall into disfavor with the most powerful of nations.

The graphic examples of civilian ‘collateral damage’ aren’t something that the public want to see or know about, they like their wars sanitized, neat, convenient, and morally clear along the lines of a John Wayne movie or other simplistic celluloid trash. Americans are mostly ignorant and express indifference at the true suffering of war and are generally the most mindless and unenlightened citizens of the world’s most dangerous of empires. We as a society gorge ourselves on violent fantasy on television, in movies and in video games reveling in every beheading, rape, dismemberment, shooting, knifing, incinerating and bludgeoning as long as we can remain safely detached and free from ever having to consider the actual consequences of violence. This is hypocrisy, a society so conditioned to accept the abominable as long as it is a part of the great American myth of righteousness and destiny glorifies death but when that death is real, nobody wants the gory details of what is perpetrated in our name. The exception being the near masturbatory glee that the mutilated and widely displayed corpses of Uday and Qusay Hussein elicited from a voyeuristic public addicted to sensationalistic cheap thrills. The bullet riddled bodies of the sons of Saddam were constantly and graphically displayed in order to feed the bloodlust necessary for rabid and continued support of the war against the Islamic savages.

The outrage over the images was made all the more conspicuous by it’s absence.

A while back, after the early afterglow of ‘Shock and Awe” had subsided and when the truth was slowly starting to seep out that "mission accomplished" was just another two word phrase along the lines of bull shit and cluster fuck I read a letter to the editor in my local newspaper that had dared to display the gruesome hanging of the charred corpses of four ‘contractors’ who were killed by a mob in the Iraqi city of Fallujah which would go on to be severely punished later. Some ridiculously dumb bitch had the audacity to write expressing her "outrage" that she actually had to explain this to her children. Americans love their wars as long as they don’t actually have to see what is being done in their names. As for the four ‘contractors’ I have no mercy and nothing but contempt for them, they were mercenaries, nothing but parasites that move from host to host preying on human misery for both the thrill and the money that comes with it but that alas is lost on those who shelter their spoiled children from all but electronic video violence. I doubt that she bothered to dash off a similar protestation over the bloody display of the war trophies that were the sons of Saddam.

What is lost in translation was the fact that the government was contracting mercenaries to do the wet work for the military. It is obvious that they were targeted for a reason, quite possibly the torture or murder of friends or family members of the rioters during one of the death squad raids that are now common in Iraq. I find the ongoing use of these ‘contractors’ to be repugnant and abhorrent, not only are they far more highly paid than the actual members of the military but they operate independent of any sort of congressional oversight and bear no accountability for their actions. I have no sympathy for bastards like that who are cruel violence junkies and arrogant psychopaths more into it for the thrill of the kill than the actual money. Just think of how great that a heroin addict would find it if he could be paid for riding the dragon. The assemblage and widespread use of private armies by the Pentagon is a very foreboding thing and may prove to have extremely grave consequences to us at home if their existence becomes acceptable to the general public and future domestic operations are commenced. Blackwater, one of the top mercenary firms was providing 'contractors' in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and no doubt these paramilitary goons already have contingency contracts lined up in the event of a 'terrorist' attack on the homeland.


I am not merely being callous over the violent fate of the ‘contractors’ , I just have far more sympathy for the innocent victims. Victims such as the Hassan family whose seventeen members were packed into a 1974 Land Rover in the early days of the invasion and were driving toward their dream of democracy and freedom from the evil savagery of Saddam. Instead of democracy, this family (the grandfather was dressed in his finest garment, a pin striped suit to look American for the celebratory occasion of their deliverance) was slaughtered in an unimaginably horrific manner by a nervous American soldier at a checkpoint who panicked and unloaded a barrage of military ordnance into the oncoming vehicle. Eleven members of the family were destroyed, not just killed but destroyed…as a veteran you can appreciate the power of military weaponry. Lamea, the pregnant wife of Bakhat Hassan survived the attack that turned the vehicle into an abattoir in which she described as follows:

"I saw the heads of my two little girls come off, my girls — I watched their heads come off their bodies. My son is dead."

An army public relations officer stated that it was "A miscommunication with civilians” after which the surviving members of the family were offered monetary compensation for their loss. As Bob Dylan once sang “money doesn’t talk it swears” and the true obscenity in this tableau is that we as Americans are so ignorant of the culture of others and so empty in our very souls that anybody could possibly offer money as a remedy for this atrocity. Unfortunately things such as this don’t get much play in the American mainstream media, there is always a Michael Jackson, Laci Petersen, Tom and Katie, Bennifer or Kobe Bryant to exploit in order to save some pathetic cunt from having to explain the insanity and abhorrence that is a war being waged in her name to some pathetically spoiled child who is pampered and indulged on the now traditional journey to become a selfishly ignorant and obese adult in the land of plenty while the impoverished children of the third world are dying of starvation.

Fallujah would go on to perish for our sins, targeted for destruction by a series of brutal military operations to quell the insurgency and to avenge the deaths of the mercenaries and to wash the bitter taste of public humiliation from the mouths of war planners. In a series of sieges that reduced the city to rubble civilians as well as combatants were targeted, snipers targeted ambulances, access to the main hospital was blocked, hundreds of Iraqis were killed and the 'collateral damage' was significant. A foreign documentary entitled Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre was produced and showed that the U.S. military was using incendiary White Phosphorous in the assaults. The video is highly recommended although not for those without a strong stomach, the evidence is as brutal as the imagery of the burned bodies. Of course this would never be allowed to air in the homeland. The media downplays the truth that is the charnel house of Iraq, there is always a king's crusade to glorify or a celebrity to worship or a lurid sex scandal to lasciviously salivate over. Just another day in the empire according to the corporate press of the ruling party.

For real journalism and truths about the bloody quagmire we must utilize foreign sources, a sick joke in a land where a free and unimpeded press is supposed to act as a vital check against the tyranny of madmen. Dahr Jamail is essential reading for those who seek to stay informed as is Robert Fisk whose brutal honesty would serve as a slap across the face were any domestic sources permitted to carry his columns on a regular basis. Were the corporate media to have any balls or the majority of the public have any brains this is what they would be reading:

So we are going to support the myth. As the headless bodies are found along the Tigris, as the mortuaries fill up, as the American dead grow far beyond 1,700 - and, let us remember, the Iraqi dead go into the tens of thousands - Europe and the rest of the world still support the American project. The smell of the dead pours into the street through the air-conditioning ducts. Hot, sweet, overwhelming. Inside the Baghdad morgue, there are so many corpses that the fridges are overflowing. The dead are on the floor. Dozens of them. Outside, in the 46C (114F) heat, Qadum Ganawi tells me how his brother Hassan was murdered. "He was bringing supper home for our family in Palestine Street but he never reached our home. Then we got a phone call saying we could have him back if we paid $50,000 [£27,500]. We didn’t have $50,000. So we sold part of our home and many of our things and we borrowed $15,000 and we paid over the money to a man in a car who was wearing a keffiyeh scarf round his head. "Then we got another phone call, telling us that Hassan was at the Saidiyeh police station. He was. He was blindfolded and gagged and he had two bullets in his head. They had taken our money and then they had killed him." There is a wail of grief from the yard behind us where 50 people are waiting in the shade of the Baghdad mortuary wall. There are wooden coffins in the street, stacked against the wall, lying on the pavement.

The American public has neither the time nor the stomach to trouble themselves with vagaries as this and the absence of the widespread syndication of Fisk’s work is a testament to a nation of selfish, apathetic, timorous fools who are far more concerned with halitosis than the stench of burning and rotting corpses that is so commonplace in the wars fought in their name. The atrocities of course take place in any war, war is a horrible thing, not something of valor and honor but an exercise in sorrow, death, destruction and the piles of stinking corpses and shattered lives that are left in the aftermath, such is as it always has been and always will be in the future. A public too accustomed to the sanitized death and violence of their false little worlds of television and video games and never forced to confront the real thing.

And So It Goes...

The military industrial complex has a vested interest in hiding this from the general population and of perpetuating the myths through propaganda. Hiding behind impugning the patriotism of others and invoking empty sloganeering such as ‘support the troops’ is not only of the lowest form of morality but of the highest form of cowardice and in the case of those who turn their magnetic ribbon stickers sideways to represent the Jesus fish, hypocrisy and apostasy. A large number of Americans ignorantly spout the jingoist phrase “nuke them all” when referring to non-Caucasian, non-Christian countries, specifically those in the middle east. This only reinforces their stupidity and lack of knowledge of the true horrors of war borne by those whose only crime was in happening to be citizens of a regime deemed to be an enemy of the American state and therefore subject to the full wrath of the arsenal of democracy, an arsenal that will always be restocked by the merchants of death that are the defense contractors.

Our cultural priorities have become so fucked up, corrupted and polluted that a glimpse of a woman's nipple shown on national television dominates all media coverage and elicits outrage while the illicit occupation in Iraq with women and children being blown apart into bloody bits in the name of the never ending and all encompassing ‘war on terror’ does not make it into the national psyche who are more interested in getting their next hit of vicarious celebrity living off of the electronic crack pipe. Our idiot king has alienated us from the rest of the world and the psychotic court jesters of his rogue administration only continue to conspire to lead us all down the path that will ultimately conclude with the destruction of the very ideals of a democratic society if not the lives of those not only here in America but throughout the world. The crack down on dissent is coming that much is certain, too many people are starting to become restless and beginning to ask questions for it not to.

The equilibrium of international relations has not only been upset by these fools and charlatans but sent off spinning into the depths of some bizarre parallel universe in which up is down, wrong is right, truth is ignorance and war is peace. We have begun the journey down the rabbit hole, let us hope that the rabbit hole does not eventually end up being a mass grave. We are now on the precipice of the new crusades, a war of civilizations and religions perpetuated by those both ignorant of history as well as world culture.

We are now playing for keeps.

Holy Propaganda Batman! Is Nothing Sacred?

"They (sic) are a superstitious cowardly lot so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts, I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible...a...a..."

-Nocturnally fixated millionare and GOP donor Bruce Wayne

You know that the fear based society has reached the penetration point of popular culture when even Batman himself is being used as a propaganda venue for propagation of the big lie of the evil and omnipotent menace of Al Qaeda. This is just the latest front in the great neocon psyop of indoctinating the masses to the incrementally suffocating quagmire of the post 9/11 police state. Der Homeland of Amerika is under total control by a very real fascist menace that just ratcheted down the clamps a bit tighter when the suck-assed, gutless, corporate bought, despotism enabling eunuchs of the DLC in The Temple of Hillary once again caved in and moved to extend the USA PATRIOT Act indefinitely so be on the lookout for the black vans (batmobiles?) to be coming soon to a neighborhood near you. I am posting the Batman story below in it's bizarre entirety (and highlighting key Karl Rove talking points) followed by more commentary:

Holy propaganda! Batman is tackling Osama bin Laden
By Harry Mount in New York

In his latest adventure, Batman will dispense with his old enemies, the Riddler and the Joker, and take on Osama bin Laden instead. In Holy Terror, Batman!, a new graphic novel by the Batman writer Frank Miller, the Caped Crusader will take on al-Qa'eda when his home town, Gotham City, which is based on New York, is attacked by terrorists. "It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a piece of propaganda - Batman kicks al-Qa'eda's ass," Mr Miller told a San Francisco comic book convention. "It just seems silly to chase around the Riddler when you've got al-Qa'eda out there.

"Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That's one of the things they're there for. It's an explosion from my gut reaction of what's happening now, a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against."

Holy Terror, Batman! does not have a scheduled publication date. It is unlikely to appear until next year at the earliest, when it will do battle with Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, which was just released in America.

In this compendium of all his statements, bin Laden does not name Batman personally, but attacks America as "the Great Satan" for exporting a culture of pornography and violence.

Jesus Fucking Christ...is nothing sacred anymore in this surrealistic fever dream of post (or maybe pre) millennial Amerika? First Kiefer Sutherland's Jack Bauer, the sociopathic fascist anti-hero of FOX TV's hit terrorist propaganda piece 24 becomes the nation's top infomercial for torture and Gestapo paramilitary police goon squad tactics and now the caped crusader himself has been conscripted and sent to the front lines in the war on the constitution and rational thinking. The media goes for the jugular when Deadeye Dick Cheney blasts a hunting buddy/GOP crony and then waits to sober up prior to calling the authorities but only after letting him him slide for five mother fucking years over the numerous occurances of far more serious acts of continuous lying, subversion of democracy and general defilement of over two centuries of American diplomacy and values that flout the legitimacy of the law itself. It was a feeding frenzy unseen since Bill Clinton dropped his goo on Monica's blue dress or at least since the saga of Lacie and the fetus.

Then the reptillian Cheney does make an appearance on FOX of course and at the end of the interview states that he has the authority to declassify confidential information and in essence blow the entire Scooter Libby indictment out of the water on another fraudulent pack of lies, damned lies and treasonous criminal activity. Cheney is the man behind the curtain, the great OZ himself pulling the levers from his undisclosed location as he manipulates the masses into blind acceptance of the neo con agenda, if you want to know the true machinations of the reactionary right movement you have to keep an eye on the Dick. If the Cheney interview were recorded using TIVO equipment you can actually see his forked tongue flickering in and out if you run the replay on super slo-mo.

According to the Rove/neocon script that has become incorporated into the entertainment industrial complex you continually hear of the danger of militant Islamic fundamentalists seizing control of nuclear weapons either through procurement on the black market or by overthrowing a regime in a country like say Pakistan or Iran. What you never hear is the danger of extremist Christian fundamentalists doing the same and we are a hell of a lot closer to that happing with their ascendancy through the American system to a terrifying proximity to having in their possession the launch codes for our own nuclear arsenal. These are the lunatics that we should be worrying about, they are the ones whose dogma includes assisting in bringing about a middle Eastern confrontation that will bring down a fiery Armageddon and enable the return of Jesus to slay all evil doers. Maybe Robin will even show up for that show.

As far as fear-mongering for political advantage, the neocon agenda and the phantom menace of Al Quaeda a great and highly recommended BBC documentary called The Power of Nightmares is out there on the internet. Of course it will never be seen in America via television or even a DVD release because of it's thesis undermining the very 'war on terror' that has become as commonplace in Amerika today as the 'war on communism' (by the way, a good case is made that that was all bullshit as well in the documentary) was for four decades running before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the first house of Bush.

American Bacchanal

The Super Bowl has come to be the perfect representation of America in all of its grossest excesses and bombastic pageantry. An annual epic display of wretched overindulgence, debauchery, drunkenness, gluttony, glitz, idolatry and greed and an overkill of hype in the true American tradition and electronically exported to the rest of the civilized and uncivilized world alike through the miracles of modern technology. Despite the continuing assault on the mythical American Dream by the establishment the citizens of the republic/empire will continue to be distracted by the same Bread and Circuses (p nem et circ ns s) that our precursors in Rome eagerly and ignorantly succumbed to as their own society was laid to waste right in front of their blind and apathetic eyes that had become fixated on cheap diversions for their daily lives. To the victors go the spoils and the victors are the networks, advertisers and league who all reap marketing bonanzas off of the unofficial national holiday. The winning team has to settle for bragging rights and a silver plated phallic object known as the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

The game and its all out accompanying hype have since the early days become a showcase for consumerism and raw capitalist hubris. The game is no longer accessible to the average fan other than on televisions that incidentally have their heaviest sales in the weeks leading up to the festival. The game long ago became too expensive for the normal fan, luxury suites and parties are packed with slimy corporate Republican douchebags, power brokers, celebrities and the Jack Abramoffs of the world seeking to parlay free Super Bowl junkets into multi million dollar deals. Initially slow to catch on Corporate America didn’t always see the Super Bowl as the immense marketing and schmoozing bonanza that it had the potential to be, early games were neither heavily promoted nor watched by a large sector of the public, the game or two weren’t even formerly called Super Bowls but eventually the advent of technology allowed Wall Street to see the game for the golden plated cash cow that it really is and the political forces came to the same conclusion. The ultimate perversion was in the nascent FOX network’s acquisition of NFL television rights for NFC games, it was what made Rupert Murdoch’s fledgling propaganda mill into a legitimate force.

The fiercely protective NFL uses an iron fist in the licensing and strict enforcement of use of name in local advertising, the National Football League enforces it’s trademarks more mercilessly than members of the Tony Soprano mob and on any given Sunday local law enforcement officials throughout the country are sent on missions to flea markets to confiscate and destroy all unlicensed league and team merchandise. There should be an organized boycott of all NFL team apparel, why should anyone pay top dollar for an official jersey that may or may not have been made by foreign sweatshop labor. In caving in to celebrity idolatry and wearing this crap people are not only pumping cash into the bloated NFL beast but also offering free advertising the equivalent of walking around with a sandwich board. Would anyone pay sixty bucks and up for a shirt that advertises Subway, Burger King, Wal Mart, Haliburton, Exxon-Mobil or any other corporation?

Corporate hacks and advertisers aren’t the only grifters who use the Super Bowl as a forum for scamming and commercialism, merchandising tie ins, travel schemes, ticket scalping and any other myriad of scams both legal and illegal are typically at their highest levels in the run up to the big game. TV sales are their highest levels as Americans scramble for that perfect new electronic false deity to place on the living room altar just in time for kickoff. In the weeks preceding the game retailers normally see record alcohol sales, especially in beer, a beverage hawked throughout the game by the big three (Budweiser, Coors and Miller) with commercials often featuring much sexual innuendo. Gambling degenerates have their biggest day of the year and bets are placed on everyting from the winning team to the point spread to which player scores first or even wins the coin flip. What you don’t hear about unfortunately is that due to the increased amount of alcohol consumed nationally on Super Sunday there are also spikes in episodes of domestic violence (womens shelters are swamped), alcohol related arrests and alcohol related vehicular accidents. The biggest winners are the networks who can have their cake and eat it too due to their ability to run commercials plugging their upcoming lineup of exploitative trash television. CBS launched it’s megahit Survivor series and FOX pimped it’s hit ‘24’ action show that is really a clever vehicle for propaganda and indoctrination regarding terrorism, fear and torture state advocacy. Ruppert Murdoch’s ode to the Bush-Cheney junta’s dramatic vision of totalitarian society now in it’s fifth season of fueling the undercurrent of fear running through America like a poisoned river. Will this be the year when advertisers seek to tap into the pure American mainline crack cocaine high of evangelical ‘Christianity’ and the millions of potential customers? Will this year’s soft drink commercials feature Jesus and Moses instead of the standard celebrities and computer generated animated figures? Stay tuned. Once all barriers fall nothing will really be able to remain sacred anymore.

As America progresses along on it’s incremental metamorphosis into an ultra religious, fascist, police state one can only wait until the first Super Bowl is held in New York City in a brand spanking new stadium that will be built with taxpayer money with the promise of hosting the ultimate game dangled like a carrot in front of a donkey. There will be the inevitable 9/11 tie ins including a state of the art reenactment of the devastation of the twin towers during a halftime show that will feature 'patriotic' music by country western stars Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood among others. There will be military marching bands, honor guards, flyovers, gospel choirs and the new mass reality television sensation of summary executions of several prominent liberals and other enemies of the state. It will be our very own Nuremburg rally, God Bless America, Free Market Capitalism, the military industrial complex and most of all The Super Bowl itself! It will be pure viscral pomp and cirumstance on a grand scale that not even Leni Reifenstahl herself could have envisioned in her wildest dreams.

But I Digress….

This year’s host city is Detroit the former ‘Motor City’ prior to the collapse of the American automobile industry is not the typical site, only the third Super Bowl to be held in a cold weather city since the game’s inception and an obvious carrot to the owners of the woebegone Detroit Lions for their construction of the new Ford Field where the game will be played. Detroit incidentally is the only U.S. city to hold the dubious distinction of honoring former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, even presenting him with the key to the city but this was a long time ago in a different country before he crossed the Bush family which in turn has double crossed the nation. Motown is a bitterly cold Midwestern hell in early February but in terms of entertainment value will represent an improvement over last year’s host. The 2005 circus maximus was held in Jacksonville, FL, the capital of strip mall evangelical churches and a city with a notorious shortage of usable quality hotel space other than the ubiquitous Motel Sixes, Motel Eights and truckstops that flank local highways. The NFL and local chamber of commerce had to arrange for numerous cruise ships to be brought in for the week in order to accommodate the high rollers. The gripe factor couldn’t have been higher for those looking for a good time unless the game were held in Mobile, Birmingham, Nashville or some other NASCAR fixated hick mecca where the only thing outnumbering meth labs are fundamentalist churches.

This year’s matchup is between the sixth seeded AFC Champion Pittsburgh Steelers and the NFC Champion Seattle Seahawks and only God himself knows what the fucking commericals will be but rest assured they will all be ranked come Monday morning and I will dutifully be weighing in with my opinion.

The Steelers, 15-1 last year only to go down in flames in the AFC title game are bearing the media mantle of ‘destiny’s darlings’, don’t believe it. This team is good and had they not lost QB Ben Roethlisberger to an injury for several games would have finished better than 11 and 5 on the regular season and potentially hosted the AFC title game, which may not have been the best situation given coach Bill Cowher’s 1-5 record in home championship contests. It took a convenient crippling of Cincinnati QB Carson Palmer, an amazing overcoming of a stacked deck and the NFL’s determination to see Indianapolis, Peyton Manning and Tony Dungy in the Super Bowl and then the fulfillment of the old adage that ‘you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ in Denver where four Jake Plummer turnovers stamped the Steelers’ ticked to Detroit where they can finally ‘win one for the thumb’ and send future Hall of Famer Jerome ‘The Bus’ Bettis out in style with the Vince Lombardi Trophy in his first Super Bowl appearance. Despite the diffuculty of their journey Pittsburgh definitely belongs.

Seattle stamped their ticket to Motown by thankfully routing the perennially overrated Carolina Panthers, I just don’t know how much more hype comparing mediocre journeyman QB Jake Delhomme to three time SB winner Tom Brady that I could have stomached and fortunately due to the Seahawk ass whipping I don’t have to. As far as my official prediction goes I am picking the Steelers to win fairly easily, let’s say by a score of about 37-16 or something along those lines. Although Seattle’s run was very impressive the majority of their wins were against teams in the weak sister NFC and they did play in the worst division of that conference and easily rolled up six wins against chumps the likes of the Cardinals, 49ers and Rams (they are the NFC version of the Indianapolis Colts who also were beneficiaries of being in a bad division) and could very easily have been upset by the Redskins in their first playoff game. I am going with Pittsburgh for the following three reasons and none of them included the hackneyed and overused by the lazy fucks in the MSM ‘Team of Destiny’ or ‘The Bettis Bowl’…they simply are the better team because:

1: They are battle tested, hardened and on a mission. They will not be just happy to be in the game which is a danger to the perennially underachieving Seahawks.

2: Don’t forget that this team was 15-1 last season and has basically the same players less the underachieving Plaxico Burress, the chronically injured Duce Staley but has another year of experience under the belt for QB Ben Roethlisberger whose inevitable collision with the rookie wall just happened to coincide with last year’s ugly home championship game loss to the Patriots.

3: The Steelers are the more physical team and will be doling out punishment on every play, a franchise tradition since the days of the formidable ‘Steel Curtain’ Defense.

Does Seattle have a chance? Sure, they have won 15 games to this point, have the NFL’s leading rusher and are very well coached by Mike Holmgren who stands to benefit from the very opposite of the major factor that ultimately did his Green Bay Packers in back in 1997 when they lost to John Elway’s Broncos 31-24. The media is constantly stroking the Steelers and pretty much downplaying Seattle’s chances….a trap that bit the fat man in the ass once before and believe me, he is aware of this and will use every motivational tool in his arsenal to his team’s advantage. I would love to see a great see-saw, cliffhanger of a game as much as the NFL and the advertisers but alas the Seahawks are a soft team and this is the worst possible match-up that they could have been saddled with in Detroit.

The Steelers roll and finally get the long elusive ‘one for the thumb’.

ED ENCHO'S SUPER BOWL HISTORY

I: Prior to all of the mega-hype and the television explosion facilitated by Pete Rozelle’s network deals and the phenomenon of Monday Night Football this was just an ugly game between the champions of two underexposed leagues, the established NFL and the rebel AFL. Vince Lombardi’s reigning NFL kings the Green Bay Packers thumped the AFL champion Kansas City Chiefs 35-10 in a win that was so easy that backup cheesehead receiver Max McGee was able to shrug off a pregame night of intense drinking and a commode hugging hangover to catch 7 Bart Starr passes for 137 yards and two TD’s against a woeful Chiefs defense that again sucks to high heaven forty years later. This one was so low profile that it wasn’t even named Super Bowl.

II: The Green Bay Packers’ 33-14 rout of the Oakland Raiders was anti-climactic after the cheesehead win over the Dallas Cowboys for the NFL title in frozen Lambeau Field in the now classic Ice Bowl game. A sign of the times and lack of popularity of the game was that the Grambling State University played both the national anthem and half time shows in the days before the game became an American cultural icon. This year’s half time performers, The Rolling Stones released Beggar’s Banquet in 1968.

III: The game that grabbed the establishment by the balls and gave them a good, hard squeezing as the AFL champion New York Jets led by ‘Broadway Joe’ Namath stunned the heavily favored Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Miami. The brash Namath would use his ‘guarantee’ of a Jet win and then backing it up as a springboard to both fame and fortune and eventual infamy when he drunkenly slobbered over Suzy Colber on national television three and a half decades later. A symbol of the sixties counterculture Namath grew his hair long, drank heavily, fornicated with relentless abandon backed it up on the field and put a huge bug up the asses of the regressive morons who would eventually register as Republicans and lead the venomous culture wars of today.

IV: The AFL makes it two in a row as the Kansas City Chiefs thump the hapless Minnesota Vikings who will soon become purple perennial Super Bowl losers and the punchline of jokes 23-7 in a game as ugly as they get. This was the last game before the merger of the two leagues.

V: This year’s edition was a poorly played, low scoring debacle in which the Baltimore Colts Jim O’Brien kicked the winning field goal with the clock winding down and lift his team to a 16-13 victory despite 7 turnovers, the opposing Dallas Cowboys had 4 of their own in the game now known as the ‘Blooper Bowl’

VI: God’s original coach Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys crushed the Miami Dolphins 24-3 in Tulane Stadium and shed the derisive tag of ‘next year’s champions’ who never could win the big one. In a bit of trivia future Chicago raving lunatic coach and Super Bowl XX winner Mike Ditka closed out the scoring for the Cowboys with a 7 yard td catch.

VII: The AFC Champion Miami Dolphins survive a matchup with George Allen’s over the hill gang Redskins 14-7 despite a hideous botched field goal by kicker Garo Yepremian who then scooped up the ball and launched an errant Dilferesque pass that was picked off and returned for a ‘skins touchdown. The fish held on to finish 17-0, the only perfect season in NFL history and the old men are still popping the corks of their champagne bottles as the last unbeaten team goes down with each passing season. Tony Dungy’s Colts made them sweat a bit but the mutinous loser Peyton Manning would have choked it away in the playoffs anyway.

VIII: The Miami Dolphins make it two wins in a row by mashing the Minnesota Vikings into the turf of Houston’s Rice Stadium behind the blitzkrieg attack of Larry Csonka who would roll up 145 yards on the way to a 24-7 victory, a textbook demonstration of smashmouth ball that was so efficient that Dolphin quarterback only had to throw the ball seven times, completing six but when you are facing a rushing defense as reminiscent of swiss cheese as that of the Vikes he could have probably have gotten away with taking the afternoon off.

IX: The Vikes make it two in a row and three overall by losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers 16-6 in the first of four wins for the nascent dynasty. Minnesota’s downfall (other than getting off of the plane in the first place) was in not learning a lesson from the previous year’s loss and shoring up their run defense which allowed Steeler RB Franco Harris to rumble for 158 yards. Purple People Eaters? More like Purple Pussies, Barney could have started at defensive tackle and been an improvement as a run stuffer.

X: The Steelers make it two in a row by riding a great performance by WR Lynn Swann (4 catches for 161 yards and a td) who was listed for doubtful after suffering a concussion in the AFC championship game and beat the Dallas Cowboys 21-17 in Miami’s Orange Bowl. In trivia notes, the group Up With People performed at halftime and game film was eventually used in the movie Black Sunday.

XI: The Vikings go a perfect 4 for 4 as Super Bowl losers as they go down meekly to future uber television analyst John Madden’s Oakland Raiders 32-14 this time getting trampled for 266 rushing yards by the Raiders’ two-pronged attack of Clarence Davis and Mark Van Eeghen and the passing duo of Kenny ‘the snake’ Stabler and Fred Biletnkoff. The game was the first to be played in Pasadena’s Rose Bowl and the halftime entertainment/advertisement was a performance of Disney’s ‘It’s A Small World’.

XII: The clock strikes twelve for the Cinderella Denver Broncos and the ‘Orange Crush’ defense whose 12-2 run captivated the Mile High City as they are destroyed by the Dallas Cowboys 27-10 in the first Super Bowl to be held in New Orleans’ new Superdome. Led by former Cowboy quarterback Craig Morton who completed as many passes to his former teammates as the guys in orange (4) the Broncos turned the ball over eight times to the ‘Doomsday Defense’ and the Cowboys held the ball for over 38 minutes in this ugly rout that was mainly notable for the Broncos’ first step in their quest to catch up to the Vikings in the futility hall of fame.

XIII: In Miami Pittsburgh goes 3 for 3 in a rematch with the defending NFL champion Cowboys in a wild offensive show. The Steelers were led by QB Terry Bradshaw’s 318 passing yards and four touchdowns, the Cowboys were equally impressive in racking up 31 points but falling short in a 35-31 loss that was as entertaining as it was wild. The Cowboys were the first team to wear their road jerseys despite being designated as the ‘home’ team although it didn’t cause a collective media orgasm like this year’s game where the Steelers rocked the sports world by doing likewise. The halftime show was an infomercial sponsored by Carnival Cruiselines. The Cowboy’s smack talking LB Thomas ‘Hollywood’ Henderson created controversy when he held court on media day to boldly proclaim that Bradshaw was so dumb that he couldn’t spell cat if you spotted him the letters C and A and we know how that one turned out with Bradshaw winning the MVP award for his performance. Henderson would eventually have the last laugh despite a bout with drugs as he would go on to hit the $ 28 million jackpot in the Texas Lottery while Bradshaw would have to be content with being a clown on the FOX NFL pregame show for a living after football.

XIV: The Steelers make it a perfect 4-0 record in Super Bowls as QB Terry Bradshaw is able to overcome three interceptions in order to lead a comeback victory over the upstart Los Angeles Rams 34-19 in Pasadena much to the delight of Terrible Towel waving members of their road contingent and the chagrin of the hometown crowd.

XV: The Oakland Raiders win their second Super Bowl by riding a 3 touchdown day by MVP quarterback Jim Plunkett to an easy 27-10 triumph over Dick Vermeil’s Philadelphia Eagles in New Orleans. The Raiders’ Rod Martin intercepted three of future ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski’s errant passes and Vermeil turned on the waterworks on his way to his coming retirement to the broadcast booth. The Raiders were the bad boys of lore as John ‘The Tooz’ Matuszak tore up Bourbon Street on his way to tearing up the Iggles. This was the first game of the Reagan era and therefore the demarcation point of American society, the stirring pre game tribute to the Iranian hostages who were released from captivity as the Gipper was sworn in (allegedly the result of dirty double dealing by George H.W. Bush in cutting a deal to prevent an October Surprise to boost Jimmy Carter’s popularity prior to the election) and the patriotic horseshit overkill that is so much a part of everyday society became an integral part of the zeitgeist.

XVI: The first game to be held in a cold weather city as the San Francisco 49ers face the Cincinnati Bengals in matchup of two teams coming off of huge turnarounds, the ‘niners were 3-13 and the Bengals 6-10 the previous year. The Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit was the site of the establishment of Super Bowl legend Joe Montana who led his team to a 26-21 victory and the first of his eventual four rings.

XVII: Washington’s John Riggins ran roughshod over the Miami Dolphins with a 166 yard, 2 td MVP performance for the Redskin’s first Super Bowl win. The Skins would score 14 points in the fourth quarter on the way to a 27-17 win that put the cap on a season tainted by a 57 day player strike that wiped out seven games. This game could also be remembered for all of the gut churning nausea induced by host network ABC's continual hyping of their lousy paramitilary action series the A-Team during nearly every commercial break. "I pity the fool" would become a household phrase during the show's ensuing five year run. A big fan was first lady Nancy Reagan whose thrill of the decade was sitting on the burly star Mr. T's lap.

XVIII: In the first Super Bowl to be held in Tampa’s ‘Big Sombrero’ the Los Angeles Raiders thoroughly embarrassed the NFC Champion Washington Redskins 38-9 behind a swarming defense led by Howie Long, Lyle Alzado, Ted Hendricks and Matt Millen that harassed quarterback Joe Theesman all day, sacking him six times and subjecting him to a pounding that had him dancing on happy feet all afternoon long. The Raidahs scored both on both a blocked punt and an interception return in the first half and then jumped on the back of running back Marcus Allen whose 191 yard, two touchdown day earned him the MVP. The most entertaining moment of the day however was Ridley Scott’s (Alien, Blade Runner) great ‘Big Brother’ commercial for Apple McIntosh that is renowned as one of the best if not the best advertisement ever for it’s great production values.

XIX: If you ever want a testimonial on the fleeting nature of fame and the rarity for a chance at an NFL championship just ask former Miami Dolphin Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino, a man who would become the most prolific passer in NFL history but came up a loser in his only Super Bowl appearance. Marino’s second season was perhaps the greatest in NFL history with 48 passing touchdowns (a record that stood until it was broken by another prolific loser Peyton Manning’s 49 in 2004) and 5,084 yards but it ended in an ugly 38-16 defeat to Joe Montana’s San Francisco 49ers in Palo Alto, CA. In a classic display of the now commonplace and utterly shameless political stagecraft that perpetuates the cult of the almighty leader, President Ronald Reagan himself participated in the coin toss via satellite from the White House.

XX: Chicago Bears’ punk quarterback Jim McMahon moons a helicopter and allegedly calls all New Orleans women “sluts” and all local men “ignorant”, the ‘Super Bowl Shuffle’ became a pop culture phenomenon and the Mike Ditka led Bears demolish the New England Patriots 46-10 in a lopsided game where the legendary Walter Payton is deprived of the opportunity to score a touchdown by marketing sensation William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry, the mammoth 335 pound Chicago defensive tackle who would sign and endorsement with McDonalds, ironic given that today the 800 pound gorilla of the fast food industry is trying to combat the image that their food is the unhealthy crap that it truly is by featuring a new salad line in response to sagging sales and the great movie Supersize Me . Payton would be offended by the callous actions of Ditka until his dying day although he had too much class to acknowledge it publicly for the indignity that it truly was…then again why expect anything other than boorish behavior from Ditka?

XXI: The ballast laden legend of the greatness of Bill ‘The Big Tuna’ Parcells began with this 39-20 trouncing of the Denver Broncos and John Elway in Pasadena. Future CBS announcer and Giants quarterback shredded the Denver defense for an NFL postseason completion record of 88 % completing 22 of 25 darts for 3 touchdowns. This game would begin an ugly stretch of bridesmaid status and undeserved national ridicule for Dan Reeves’ Broncos.

XXII: The Broncos make it two ugly losses in a row, topping the prior year’s debacle by blowing an early 10-0 lead to ‘God’s Coach’ and the Washington Redskins who rode the arm of perennial underachiever Doug Williams and previously unknown RB Timmy Smith to a whopping 35 point second quarter and coasted to a 42-10 win, had Gibbs not called off the dogs the Skins may very well have been the first NFL team to score in the triple digits against the bumbling Broncs.

XXIII: The famous ‘John Candy’ game where 49er quarterback Joe Montana spotted the soon to be deceased fat slob actor in the stands and used the Orca sighting as a motivational ploy to calm his offense for the eventual comeback that would cement his legendary status as well as beat the Cincinnati Bengals and the Ickey Shuffle 20-16. Also of notoriety was the bad omen of Cincy head coach Sam ‘Wicky Wacky’ Wyche finding starting fullback Stanley Wilson on the floor of his hotel room john shaking, sweating and in the throes of a huge overdose of Bolivian marching powder after allegedly leaving a team meeting to find his playbook. Sure Stan, just tell it to Miami Vice. Also this year marked the premier of the fabled Bud Bowl I as a commercial.

XXIV: John Elway and Dan Reeves hit the trifecta for embarrassing big game losses when they ran into the buzzsaw of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice’s San Francisco 49er machine. Pity the poor Cleveland Browns who once again lost the AFC title game to their personal bogeyman Broncos only to sit at home sadly dipping Doritos in bean dip and crying into their beer over Denver’s failure to show up for kickoff. The 55-10 decimation still remains as the worst ass kicking in the history of a game that has had it’s fair share of them. This dog was over nearly immediately local N’awlins legend Aaron Neville finished singing the Star Spangled Banner. French Quarter bars were swarmed well before the Broncos were able to cut into a 41-3 lead and my fat ditto-head childhood friend Rocky broke down in drunken tears in the Super Dome parking lot after a sorry finale to a nightmare weekend that included being felt up in a Bourbon Street gay bar over watered down beer and a bowl of soupy red beans and rice.

XXV: The 25th anniversary edition of the Super Bowl in Tampa will be remembered not only for the blatant nationalist/patriotic militarism on display due to it falling in the middle of the Gulf War to kick Saddam Hussein’s ass out of Kuwait but for another display of kicking that will forever live in infamy in the hearts of Buffalo Bills fans on their way to their first of four straight big game losses. Poor Scott Norwood became the biggest sports goat since Bill Buckner when he missed a potential game winning 47 yard field goal allowing the Giants to eke out a 20-19 win in what was one of the most well played games in the history of the Biggest Kahuna of them all and further enhanced the legendary status of the Big Tuna Bill Parcells who was revered as if he were the second coming of Vince Lombardi until it became apparent that he has never won dick without Bill Belichik who has won three of his own titles without the annoying, fickle lard ass who was his previous boss.

XXVI: In the first Super Bowl to be played in frigid Minneapolis, MN Buffalo Bills running back Thurman Thomas lost his helmet, was subsequently held to 13 yards rushing and quarterback Jim Kelly chipped in with 4 interceptions as the K Gun offense misfired and Buffalo went down quickly and quietly to Jesus Gibbs, Mark Rypien and the Washington Redskins 37-24 in a game that only appeared close on the scoreboard due to two late Bill touchdowns in garbage time.

XXVII: The 1993 edition of the game was played in Pasadena, CA after being pulled from original host site Tempe because of Arizona’s racist stance against recognizing Martin Luther King Day that was eventually shot down by voters giving the Phoenix area a shot three years later. The return of the Dallas Cowboys to the Super Bowl after years of mediocrity was only the second biggest story of the day other than Whacko Jacko who performed his trademark crotch gyrations at halftime in what would be the waning days of his reign as the self proclaimed ‘king of pop’ and just prior to the continuing allegations of child molestation immersed the little freak in years of scandal. The game itself proved that the third time was definitely not the charm for the Buffalo Bills who were annihilated 52-17 as they self immolated under the weight of a record nine turnovers. The final score actually could have been worse had the showboating Leon Lett not been stripped of the ball as he was going into the end zone for a touchdown on a fumble return.

XXVIII: The Buffalo Bills tie the Denver Broncos and Minnesota Vikings as the most losing Super Bowl teams of all time all three being a collective 0 for 12 in the big game as the Dallas Cowboys take the rematch game of last year’s contest 30-13 and Buffalo actually led at halftime 13-6 before facing an Emmitt Smith onslaught as Jimmy Johnson’s Cowboys scored the last 24 points in Atlanta for their second straight title and with a young team could have set records were it not for their petulant owner Jerry Jones who chafed at not getting enough credit for the team’s success, it had to rankle him that Johnson wasn’t exactly fond of the entourage on the sidelines including at times Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar among other Jones cronies. Then a slight at a post game party led Jones to run Johnson out of town and in an insult to the impeccably coiffed little Napoleon Jones went so far as to bring in the hated Barry Switzer as a replacement, allegedly snippily referring to Jimmah as “the little cunt”. What could have been an NFL record run of Super Bowl wins ended in disaster, Dallas would go on to win one more Super Bowl two years later but oh what could have been had egos not interfered with business.

XXIX: Coming in the aftermaths of local race riots in host city Miami this butt ugly game was yet another of the ridiculously over hyped and under competitive routs in the history of the biggest game on the planet. The San Francisco 49ers and Steve Young together emerged from the shadow of Joe Montana to drop a 49-26 ass kicking on the upstart San Diego Chargers in a game that was effectively over at halftime. ABC had the broadcast rights and rolled out not only the tired and stale Hank Williams Jr. for an ‘Are You Ready for Some Football’ pre game show followed by the ‘singing’ of the national anthem by national sweetheart Kathie Lee Gifford prior to the double whammy of her clothing line’s exposure as the product of sweatshop labor and the even more embarrassing revelation that perfect hubby Frank of Monday Night Football fame was possessed of a cheatin’ heart when it was revealed that he was banging a TWA stewardess and the ensuing scandal led to an ugly public electronic confessional on the Barbara Walters show.

XXX: Tempe, AZ finally got it’s shot to host a Super Bowl after the failure to recognize MLK day cost them three years prior and it ended up being a hell of a lot better contest than most would have imagined. Megalomaniac Dallas Cowboy owner Jerry Jones’ big ‘Fuck You’ to former coach Jimmy Johnson by winning a title with Barry ‘Bootlegger’s Boy’ Switzer at the helm couldn’t have been accomplished without the assistance of the Cowboy’s most valuable player and it wasn’t Deion Sanders. Pittsburgh Steelers QB Neil O’Donnell who had been an accurate and fairly mistake free passer all season long imploded in extremely ugly fashion on the national stage throwing three of the worst interceptions in the history of Sun Devil Stadium and that includes the Jake Plummer years. O'Donnell single handedly not only gave the game to Dallas on a silver platter but also made a lifelong friend in mediocre Cowboy cornerback Larry Brown who was allowed to parlay his two picks into a lucrative free agent deal with perennial sucker Al Davis and the Raiders where he inevitably was exposed as the loser that he always was. The Steelers dominated everywhere on the scoreboard where they eventually came out on the wrong side of a 27-17 score thanks to O’Donnell’s lousy performance. The absence of the usual smack talk from the Dallas locker room in the aftermath speaks volumes.

XXXI: The Green Bay Packers returned to the big game after a three decade absence and were able to parlay a flurry of big plays as well as a huge special teams performance by MVP Desmond Howard whose 244 return yards including a 99 yard touchdown on a kickoff return to take the wind out of the Patriots’ sails after a Curtis Martin run had cut the Packer lead to six was the difference in this one. Local favorite Brett Favre made the most out of his triumphant return to N’Awlins a city within spittin’ distance of the family home in Kiln, MS and came away a 35-21 winner in his first Super Bowl appearance. Richard Jewell lookalike Mike Holmgren (the coach of this year’s NFC champ Seattle) bested the Big Tuna whose New England team couldn’t overcome their inept special teams play or four Drew Bledsoe interceptions in the fat man’s last appearance in the big game.

XXXII: John Elway and the Denver Broncos finally get the monkey off of their backs by winning their first Super Bowl over the much hyped Green Bay Packers in San Diego by a score of 31-24. The wild card Broncos were given absolutely no chance by the media and punditry given the line on the Packers as 11 ½ point favorites to continue the NFC’s 13 year run of dominance and were stroked all week long while the Broncos were virtually ignored. The game however was a different story as Denver played inspired ball from the get go and the Pack had no answer for their running game. This one had all of the signs of becoming a super rout early on with the Packer defense led by the incredible mountain of run stuffing fat and John Madden favorite Gilbert Brown being run over by Terrell Davis but a migraine headache sidelined TD for a quarter and allowed the cheeseheads to get back into the game. The resulting see saw battle made for one of the best and most entertaining games in years and didn’t end until a Brett Favre pass was broken up on fourth down in Bronco territory with under a minute left. John Elway would finally have his title and shed the tag of not being able to win the big one. The funniest line of the day goes to NBC’s Dick Enberg who observed late in the fourth quarter after the MVP Davis had run for his 3rd touchdown and was on his way to a 157 yard day “Gilbert Brown is down again….and he’s not getting up”.

XXXIII: Big time ‘Family values’ guy and Atlanta Falcon defensive leader Eugene Robinson celebrates his earlier receipt of the ‘Bart Starr Award’ for high moral character by ditching his wife and kids for a serious trolling expedition through Miami’s sleazier parts in search of a blowjob and was arrested by local vice cops (no word ever came out on whether he propositioned Crockett or Tubbs) in an embarrassing incident that stunned teammates and set off a paparazzi frenzy. The distracted Falcon cornerback played the game in a cloud of shame that was evident when he was burned on an 80 yard touchdown toss from Bronco QB John Elway to Rod Smith that in another embarrassing moment was nearly missed by the FOX network’s inexplicable blunder in switching from a commercial timeout back to the game. In his last game Elway is the MVP as he wins his second consecutive title and perhaps even better humiliates former Coach Dan Reeves in a 34-19 payback for ruining the early years of his career what a way to go out in style.

XXXIV: The triumph of both long suffering Dick Vermeil and Georgia Frontiere as well as the canonization of Kurt Warner, the born again Christian grocery clerk turned NFL MVP with the winning St. Louis Rams. The media predictably swarmed around Warner in a feeding frenzy and went into overkill mode with the multitude of maudlin human insterest stories over his football salvation. The network television crew featured shots of his homely, butch looking wife throughout the game who was dressed in an ugly blue synthetic fur boa that appeared to have been scrounged out of a dumpster behind and East St. Louis Salvation Army thrift store. The powers that be jobbed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers by overruling an obvious Bert Emanuel catch in the waning moments of what could have been a stunning upset of the media darling Rams and given the league a nightmare matchup of two of the league's best defenses in what would be a cure for insomniacs everywhered. This one was actually a pretty exciting game that went town to the last play and a huge stop of Tennessee Titan's WR Kevin Dyson at the one to give the Rams a 23-16 victory and allow the emotionally unstable Vermeil to break down in tears during the post game celebrations. Also Baltimore Ravens all pro linebacker Ray Lewis is involved in an ugly murder outside an Atlanta nightclub at a postgame party.

XXXV: Mainly notable for the triumphant return of the maligned Trent Dilfer to Tampa as the winning Super Bowl quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens. This was to have been the local Bucs home title game and the Glazer family fought the NFL long and hard to keep the pirate ship replica in place in the end zone rather than to remove it and use the area for extra seats. Tampa Bay finished as a 10-6 wild card team due to head coach Tony Dungy’s decision to make a political statement in starting the rancid Shaun ‘Burger’ King at QB which would eventually cost the Bucs dearly in the playoffs. In the SB the Ravens defense made mincemeat of the woeful N.Y. Giants in one of the worst games in the long and sordid history of non-competitive showings. Alleged murderer Ray Lewis won the MVP award but not a trip to Disney World out of fear that he may have shanked Donald Duck or Goofy. The final score of 34-7 is in no way indicative of just how bad a game that this one was.

XXXVI: The first post 9-11 New World Order Super Bowl saw a classic upset of an overrated and over-hyped media darling team as well as the rise of a new dynasty when the huge underdog New England Patriots stunned the heavily favored ‘Greatest Show on Turf’ of Mike Martz and Jesus Warner 20-17. Pats coach Bill Belichik began his ascent up the mountain and into the pantheon of coaching legends by simply coaching good ball, allowing the megalomaniac Ram coach Mike Martz to self destruct by arrogantly neglecting to use his greatest weapon by feeding the ball to running back Marshall Faulk in favor of instead placing the game in the hands of former grocery clerk Kurt Warner who threw the rock like he was back in Iowa chucking cans of creamed corn. A buzzer beating Adam Vinatieri field goal won it for New England in one of the best games ever. The most memorable moment of the day would however belong to rock superstars U2 whose outstanding halftime performance included a sincere and stirring tribute to the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks to a rousing rendition of the classic ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ in the days prior to when Karl Rove and his slimy rat fuck goons exploited the tragedy at every opportunity for political gain.

XXVII: The long suffering former NFL joke Tampa Bay Buccaneers resoundingly thumped Al Davis and the Oakland Raiders 48-21 in a game not nearly as close as the score indicated. New Buc coach Jon Gruden couldn’t have embarrassed ‘The Godfather’ any more had he buttfucked his former boss at midfield during the halftime show. Manic depressive Oakland Center Barrett Robbins won the ‘Eugene Robinson Award’ as he was the distraction of the year after wandering off on a drunken Tijuana rampage. Knocking back straight shots of raw tequila and taking in the legendary donkey show somehow don’t equate to a positive pre game preparation and the manic depressive Robbins was sidelined for what would be the biggest game of his life, not that it mattered to the Raidahs. The best moment of all was that the national anthem was performed by the Dixie Chicks who would soon become the scapegoat for right wing scum throughout the land as the attack on Iraq commenced and the lead singer of this lousy pop country trio dared to say in front of a foreign audience "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas." Of course this was met by outrage in der homeland as well as many right wing radio sponsored cd burnings…hmmm. The only worse turnaround from nationally revered celebrity to nationally reviled infamy would have been if the Manson Family Singers sang God Bless America prior to Super Bowl III in Miami eight months prior to their notorious bloody murder spree.

XXXVIII: The infamous Janet Jackson pierced nipple incident juices TIVO sales and sends the morality police into apoplectic rants against the decline of secular society, the fleeting millisecond second glimpse of a tittie was far more outrageous to the national morality police than the general repugnant nature of the tasteless commercials featuring farting horses and ubiquitious potty jokes. Is this a great country or what? The Patriots reclaim their championship mantle by using another last second field goal by iceman Adam Vinatieri to beat the upstart Carolina Panthers 32-29 in one of the most entertaining games in the series history. There were 37 points scored in a wild fourth quarter and both quarterbacks Tom Brady and Jake Delhomme had huge passing days with 300 yard, 3 touchdown games.

XXXIX: The return from injury of WR Terrell Owens was this game’s biggest story and the Philadelphia Eagles finally in the Super Bowl after three straight NFC title game losses actually played well enough to have a chance before QB Donovan McNabb started blowing chow through his faceguard late in the fourth quarter and head coach Andy Reid’s poor clock management led to a 24-21 loss and the third title in four years for the New England Patriots. Super Bowl records were set for complaints about the host city: Jacksonville, FL the strip mall church capital of America and cruise ships had to be brought in for the high rollers due to the city's lack of hotel rooms that weren't part of the Motel 6 franchise.

FEEL THE HYPE !