RUSH: This offends me. The New York Times over the weekend: “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” NewsBusters: “On Sunday, the Times Magazine published a column titled ‘Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?’ Writer Steve Almond, best known previously for resigning an adjunct professorship at Boston College because Condoleezza Rice was picked for commencement speaker, argued that sending men to the NFL was like sending our underclass soldiers off to war in Afghanistan…” Almond wrote, “Pro sports are, by definition, monetized arenas for hypermasculinity.
“Football is nowhere near as overtly vicious as, say, boxing. But it is the one sport that most faithfully recreates our childhood fantasies of war as a winnable contest. … Over the past 12 years, as Americans have sought a distraction from the moral incoherence of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the game has served as a loyal and satisfying proxy. It has become an acceptable way of experiencing our savage impulses, the cultural lodestar when it comes to consuming violence. What differentiates [football] from the glut of bloody films and video games we devour is our awareness that the violence in football, and the toll of that violence, is real.”
So, “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?”
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mr. Snerdley has asked me a question: “What is ‘hypermasculinity,’ as it is used by Steve Almond in describing war and football?” You know, it’s fascinating to me. The liberals, it turns out, do hate football. It apparently has been latent, and this push in the last two years has brought them to the surface. It’s always been there. “Hypermasculinity,” I would define, honestly, as patriotism. I think that’s one of the things that bugs ’em about football.
But hypermasculinity, to these guys, it’s just plain old masculinity. Men being men is hypermasculinity. What else do you think hypermasculinity is? It has to be just plain old masculinity. From the standpoint of your average leftist male, masculinity to them is what? It’s not… (interruption) No. No. Masculinity, to your average leftist male, is not masculinity at all. So, therefore, genuine masculinity to them is “hypermasculinity.”
This is a game. The only reason people like this game is ’cause they get to watch war! They get to watch hypermasculinity and war. It’s a substitute for watching war. People love violence, want to consume violence. This is the “cultural lodestar when it comes to consuming violence. What differentiates it from the glut of bloody films and video games we devour is our awareness that the violence in football, and the toll of that violence, is real.”
From the article: “Pro sports are, by definition, monetized arenas for hypermasculinity.” So I guess in this guy’s framework, hypermasculinity would be men being violent — because men are natural predators, don’t forget. They are brutes in their normal state. They are predators in their normal state. They’re abusers in their normal state. Violence that is approved, sanctioned, celebrated, and rewarded is hypermasculinity.
Hell, I don’t know.
You’re asking me to put myself inside the mind of one of these clowns?
(interruption) Well, I do understand ’em better than most people do, but hypermasculinity is a new one on me. It might take some introspection, or inspection to figure this out. But I think I probably got a pretty good handle on it. (interruption) It is! (interruption) It is immoral to watch the Super Bowl. In fact, it’s immoral to watch the Super Bowl. It’s too violent. Now, abortion? There is nothing wrong with that at all, for example.
There is nothing immoral about it. There is nothing violent about it. There’s nothing wrong with that at all as far as these people are concerned. Look, the Democrat Party today if you want… The Democrat Party today actually sees same-sex marriage as a way to turn out voters. Now, the Obama record won’t work to turn out voters. You have 48 million Americans, almost 50 million on food stamps, because, largely of Democrat policies.
Yet the State of the Coup address is gonna be all about inequality, which they’re going to try to equate with poverty. Now, poverty is not the result of inequality, but that’s the stretch or the connection they want people to make. So they’re gonna take the number of people in economic hard times, put that in this whole mix of inequality and income inequality, and they’re going to once again to exploit the poor and the disadvantaged.
Did you see the Grammys last night had this massive symbolic gay wedding? Forty gay weddings that were administered by Queen Latifah. That has nothing to do with music. It has to do with these people mocking their audience. This is the leftist music industry flipping the bird to the country, to flyover country. It is. I have no doubt what’s going on here. (interruption) Football? Football’s gonna…? (interruption) On the violence, on the hypermasculinity, barbarism? Unconscionable.
We maim people and applaud it!
We cheer it and we’re killing people!
This so predictable.