Stupor Bowl Syndrome

Did you watch the Super Bowl? I didn’t.

Which means that I’m supposed to be suffering from–ready for this?–Super Bowl Syndrome. Some wooly headed pop-psychology types have cooked up this term to describe the shame that males supposedly feel if they have no attraction to the Big Game.

Presumably, all our buddies are worried that we’re clandestinely interested in ballet and Barbie Dolls if we don’t sit around like morons and boorishly hoot at the television screen on Super Sunday.

Well, I have no such worries. I’m as red blooded American macho as it gets, but I see nothing manly about looking at a bunch of steroid freaks with calcified skulls running around on a field of phony grass.

How is this any more manly than watching the strip show at the Moonlight club? A 340 pound freak from Detroit in a helmet doesn’t spur my attention. A 98 pound foxy lady on the stage just might. No apologies there.

If I’m supposed to feel deficient for not watching football…well, I don’t. Sorry.

On a related note, President Bush was soundly thrashed by the media’s nattering nabobs of nitwitery when it was discovered that he doesn’t have cable TV at his ranch. He, too, was presumably deficient somehow. The implication was that only troglodytes and the Unibomber would be harbor such anti-social tenancies.

But to my mind, then-candidate Bush climbed up about 10 notches on the credibility scale.

The Stupor Bowl, and all its related events, is just another loud reminder of the insidious nature of the mass entertainment industry. It is, without doubt, the most powerful social force in America. I don’t begrudge folks who consume its wares, though I personally think the wares are akin to poison.

Indeed, these days, the medium is more than the message. The medium is the master. Anybody hapless enough to lock horns with the American entertainment/media cabal will be publically persecuted in short order. No news, this, to our fair island of Saipan, which has seen the ugly results of what happens when the Opinion Makers get their cross hairs on a victim. A doe being scoped with a .30-06 stands a better chance of survival.

Which is why the Commonwealth, if it wants to keep a voice in the United States, has to fund continued Public Relations efforts out there. We’re dealing with the Big Boyz over there, and without competent and proven professional talent out there, we’re sunk. Period.

Call in my naval heritage, but I’m against sinking in any venue as a matter of principle. And I didn’t sink into a couch to watch the Stupor Bowl. The big machine of American mass entertainment will have to roll on without me. As for Saipan, the big machine of American political opinion is something we’ll always have to grapple with. That’s just the way it is.

Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. “Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com”