I posed a question the other day because I truly was curious about the Super Bowl.
Not that I had a team in that, but I was truly interested in the final score. I went to every website I usually do, plus a few more, looking for the elusive score.
Not to be found. I did, however, see headline after headline about the competing halftime shows — Bad Bunny vs. Kid Rock — which on the surface sounds like the title match at a wrestling show but instead was yet another symptom of the us-vs.-them paradigm plaguing our country.
Even before the actual Super Bowl was played, this matchup was promo’d worse that anything featuring Randy Savage or Hulk Hogan. Instead of being about entertainment and music, we focused on whether a cross-dressing Jamaican entertainer singing in Spanish was more appropriate for the premier sports competition that a rootin’ tootin’ rock star and a bunch of mid-card country singers.
While I was looking for a score, all I found was each individual camp analyzing the performance and the viewership while condemning the other camp’s intractability regarding acceptance.
And I couldn’t care less. Seriously, not even a little.
There was a line in a series of books by Stephen R. Donaldson that cropped up unbidden during all of this; one character told another that he would like to hear his story, but the second man was reluctant because the story was a tragedy. The first character, who was from a race of people that thrived on storytelling, told him, “Joy is in the ear that hears.”
Meaning, you decide if you like it or not.
Another thing that leapt to mind was the “Serenity Prayer,” which admonishes the supplicant to know the difference between what he could and could not change. Since the NFL and the broadcast entity made the decision about what was seen, nothing I or anyone else could do would make a difference. So that leads to …
A song lyric that is really apropos here is from Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By,” which is something anyone with an issue with the music could have and should have done.
From the beginning of television sets, even in the black-and-white days, every one of those appliances on through the current spate of 100-inch Smart TVs has an amazing feature called an off switch. Some of these, even in the Jurassic era of television design, came with a remote control that had an off button. Also a mute button, but that would be for the later models.
Don’t like what you’re seeing? Turn the TV off. Don’t like what you’re hearing? Mute the device. You can even do radical things like a quick game of touch football in the backyard with the kids, or toss a few basketballs at a rim, or look at the clouds, or cook a plate of eggs, or bang out a quick game of Skip Bo. There’s no need to rail at the heavens wanting the world to cave to your whim.
The amount of drama ginned up over the competing events only drew more attention to the events, and further, had each side of the spectrum building forts from couch cushions to protect their fragile and really ineffective beliefs. They day could have been so much better by just … walkin’ on by.
Tony Farkas is editor of the Trinity County News-Standard and the San Jacinto News-Times. He can be reached at tony@polkcountypublishing.com.
