Went to Tucker Tom's, then Acme, to replenish the larder. Acme was having a "big game party," with free food, decorations, a loud speaker, and other hoopla. They were actually serving not just finger food, but full lunches. Buffet tables were set up in various locations with hot dogs, soda, and sides on some; cold cuts on others; potato and macaroni salads, chips and dips; soda and other drinks on ice; plentiful desserts--all, of course, with the appropriate tableware.
I must be hopelessly serious-minded, or a big grouch, or something, as I found this obscurely disturbing. Everybody was buying into Super Bowl frenzy, which grows and grows every year. It's no longer a mildly interesting athletic contest among young millionaires capping off the football season. Don't these grocery shoppers know that the sole purpose is to enrich the bottom line of the mega-corporations that run the country?
The SuperBowl has become some kind of ritual--you're practically unpatriotic if it doesn't excite you--that diverts attention from the horrors we're still inflicting on people in other countries. It competes for notice of the good works for which so many Americans are responsible and which so seldom come to the fore in the media. The carnival atmosphere seems designed to entice people to put aside concerns about the tanking economy, the plight of inner-cities, and the abasement of our culture in favor of pursuing a trivial event.
There's a painting, or novel, or story--can't remember which--concerning members of the highest level, most elegant, German society at a summer ball just before World War I. The women are adorned with fabulous jewels and the men are suave, handsome, and knowing. The hall blazes with light, the band plays loudly, and the dancers dance and dance and dance long into the night...while their whole society is crumbling and the guns of August boom in the distance.
But nobody hears because the band is so loud.