I Wonder if He's Heard of the Chicago Cubs...

Over at the Atlantic, it's telling what's showing:

These guys really are something beyond a sports team. I first really understood this, a few years back, when the new stadium was unveiled. The Cowboys suffered a humiliating loss, at home, on their inaugural night. But all anyone talked about was the scoreboard, the seating, the positioning of the cheerleaders. People were making money. The game was irrelevant.

I don't really mind my time sucking, or even being cardiac kids. Obviously, I'd prefer that not to be the case, but that's part of being a sports-fan. But rarely have I seen a football team whose prominence is so disconnected from its performance. People claim to hate the Cowboys for this exact reason, without realizing that their hatred is precisely what makes the scheme so brilliant. No one cares that you tun [sic] in to watch the Cowgirls get there [sic] just deserts [sic] --it only matters that you tuned in.

Oddly, his closing words remind me very much of the perils of being a young black blogger, hired to add "diversity" to a name-brand magazine.

I imagine Jerry Jones really does want to win. But the fact of the thing is that he wins either way. It's rather amazing to see a brand so far exceed a team.

When you're removed from meritorious competition, you simply don't succeed (at the craft, not at collecting marketplace goodies) as you might had the bar been kept high and the competition a bit more honest.

I really think we'll know the day we're turning the corner in this country when we overhaul our attitudes: it's not what you have, it's what you can do. Honestly.

The "change" we were sold in 2008 simply meant letting a black man, and his family, reach the pinnacle of American success. Integrating himself into that unhealthy political system, the Obamas reaping the same elite style "rewards" the Kennedys once held for their own.

The real face of Change, I imagine -- not yet visible on the horizon -- will be akin to the younger Jesus in the Temple. Overturning the moneylenders' tables and admonishing them to take their business from his Father's house.

He wouldn't, you see, simply settle for a place at those tables...

As Americans, we really do have to change our core values -- our ways of measuring quality and worth -- if we're to ever compete equally in an increasingly competitive global intellectual marketplace, without relying on overpowering displays of military might buttressing our own beliefs. (That can leave behind tragic consequences to be calculated by generations to come.)

The Day will come.
Many will be ready, and probably plenty won't recognize the fight when they come to see it -- their instincts and senses dulled by those artificial advantages plenty of post-War* Americans have been operating under for so long now...



* the Big One, as Archie would put it.