RUSH: First the Super Bowl. It is stunning. Here you have Beyonce — did you happen to catch Beyonce’s contribution to the halftime show? I want to give Beyonce the benefit of the doubt. After all, she’s a woman. And as such, she’s probably not that big a sports fan. Probably doesn’t follow the NFL that closely. And when she saw the two teams involved, she naturally thought that one of them was the Black Panthers, particularly if she happens to read the Huffing and Puffington Post, which had a story over the weekend that we talked about which claimed that the Carolina Panthers were the first NFL team to be unapologetically black.
So it’s understandable that Beyonce might have thought the Black Panthers were playing in the game and hence her tribute to the Black Panthers. This has everybody up in arms. She gets a police escort to the game. They sweep everybody off the highway so she can get to the Super Bowl on time. She didn’t have to go hours early and wait. They parted the traffic for her so she could get there with not much downtime before she had to perform and does that routine ripping the cops, promoting Black Lives Matter.
I’ll tell you, the observation is this. You have in the Super Bowl, you have the pregame, which features the anthem with a giant American flag spread out over the entire field. You have military, uniformed military all over the place. You have an Air Force or Navy, not sure which, flyby after the anthem. You have the national anthem sung, and it’s always sung reverentially. It’s always sung with great respect. Lady Gaga with the honors yesterday.
So you have the traditional pro-America, patriotic, out-of-this world pregame show, and then you get to the halftime of the Super Bowl, and what the halftime show of the Super Bowl is, to me anyway, is representative of the cultural decay and the political decay and the social rot that is befalling our country. And you see both in contrast with each other within an hour and a half or two hours of each other. The pregame show, it is amazing how patriotic it is.
The pregame show I think is emblematic of why the left dislikes football so much, because it is so patriotic oriented and it promotes patriotism and Americana in ways that are frowned upon today in many quarters of the left, such as universities and schools and graduation ceremonies where you’re not allowed to show this kind of patriotism because it’s uncool or politically incorrect or what have you. Then you get to halftime and it’s an entirely different country that’s on the stage. It’s an entirely different portrayal and exhibition, if you will, of American culture.
Now, the Super Bowl commercials. I thought, frankly, I’m a big football fan as you know and yesterday was a defensive triumph for the Broncos, exactly what I said, by the way. I know many of you are probably remembering that I thought the Panthers would win. There was always a caveat, there was a disclaimer. I said the Denver defense is gonna have to win this game, because the Denver offense cannot get in a shoot-out and keep up with the Panthers. The Denver defense won this game hands down. The Carolina Panthers hadn’t seen anything like this before.
And Cam Newton shows up as one of Obama’s sons in the postgame show and lasts about three or four minutes mumbling through a bunch of answers and getting up and walking out. And I’m telling you right now, there’s all kinds of criticism that has been aimed at Cam Newton — and it’s only gonna intensify. Deion Sanders, in many people’s minds the conscience of the NFL… (coughing) Ahem. Ahem. Excuse me. Deion Sanders, the conscience of the NFL is saying (summarized), “You don’t do that. You do not.
“You are the face of our league. You are the poster boy of our league, Cam. You do not do that. Brady wouldn’t have done it. A Manning wouldn’t have done it. Kurt Warner wouldn’t have done it. Carson Palmer wouldn’t have done it. No other losing quarterback has ever shown up that way and walked out in a huff.” And it’s going to be commented upon, plus the fact that Cam didn’t try to recover a fumble late in the game. It’s not gonna be pretty. But aside that from that, because it’s a defensive-dominated game, many people thought it was boring.
And if you don’t have any appreciation for defense… I mean, in a fan sort of way, scheming and pursuit, the way they’re able to rush the passer without blitzing… They blitzed the safeties a couple times, but just took away every rushing lane that Cam Newton has had wide open all season long. They just bottled everything up. They did to Cam Newton yesterday, the Broncos did, what the Seattle Seahawks did to Peyton Manning two years ago at the Super Bowl in New Jersey. Let me…? Brian, did you think it was pretty boring game? Ho-hummer? (interruption)
You liked it. What about you, Snerdley? (interruption) You really liked the game. Wait a second, now. You liked the game. It must have been that your team was winning is why you liked the game. (interruption) All right. (interruption) Yeah. Well, you know what? Here’s another thing. Snerdley just said, “I’m glad Peyton Manning won.” Peyton Manning did not have a good day. Peyton Manning had an almost identical day to John Elway 18 years ago, when Elway won his first Super Bowl in San Diego against the Green Bay Packers.
They were underdogs in that game. Elway was like 13-of-27 for 140 yards and an interception and no touchdowns, and Peyton was the same thing. There was one offensive touchdown yesterday. Peyton did not have a great Peyton Manning kind of game. But he was the winning quarterback and that’s what people remember and everybody’s happy. Peyton Manning is also a throwback, in a sense. On the one hand you had the Panthers, who are showboating and braggadocio and all this pregame talk and calling themselves Superman, Supermen, all of this.
On the other side, you’ve got the Broncos who are behaving in an entirely different way. They are not making a spectacle. They are not making wild predictions. Peyton Manning is the poster boy of humility, humility is a virtue, and humility won the Super Bowl yesterday. Humility won over… A lot of people, I think… I’m just gonna make a wild guess here: A lot of people who are happy with the way the game turned out may not know why. They might say “I’m happy to see Peyton Manning get that final win on his way out to his retirement.
“I’m happy to see Denver win after losing two. I’m happy for Pat Bowlen and his team to win since he’s come down with Alzheimer’s.” I think there’s a subconscious reason why a lot of people are happy Denver won. And Denver… In a loose way, the Broncos in the way they behaved and humility as their guiding virtue, it was a triumph of good manners, solid behavior. Solid citizenship over braggadocio, and whatever other lack of virtue that you might think the Panthers exhibited or displayed. Not that they’re bad guys. Don’t anybody misunderstand.
But there are a number of people in the country worried about where we’re heading culturally and socially, and I think there are subconscious reasons people are happy for various and certain outcomes. They may not even realize it until somebody like me comes along and reminds them, and they’re probably saying, “Yeah, yeah. Right on, dude. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly how I’m feeling. I just didn’t know it ’til you came along, just like it was when you came along in 1988.” Wade Phillips redeemed himself. Wade Phillips, the defensive coordinator for the Denver Broncos…
What do you mean, “Wade Phillips redeemed himself?” Well, I know but I’m talking about fans and why they’re saying it. I don’t think there’s… There’s some people saying, “Yes, I’m so happy the Broncos won; Wade Phillips redeemed himself.” But I don’t think that’s the reason you’re excited about it. And he’s a fine guy, by the way. He’s the son of Bum Phillips, who was also a fine guy. I loved Bum Phillips, ex-coach of the Houston Oilers and the New Orleans Saints. I’m not trying to rain on your parade. I’m just saying, there’s a lot of people happy Denver won, but they’re not sure why. I’m just trying to tell ’em why.
And you throw Wade Phillips in there. Cool. Fine and dandy. The commercials? Pretty boring, as Super Bowl commercials go, and I think that is interesting as well. Some of the commercials were preachy. There was a lot of attempted humor that fell flat. One of the most controversial commercials — and it’s interesting, your age will determine what it is about this commercial that bothered you, if anything did, and that’s the Doritos commercial. Now, the pro-aborts and the NAGs are livid over this commercial. They are just fit to be tied.
They are tweeting, they are Facebooking, they are guesting wherever they can. They have just gone livid. They’ve created a tweet storm over one thing, the Doritos commercial “humanized” a baby in the womb, and they cannot stand that. They’re admitting it. They are admitting that this is what bothers them, because in the NAG world and in the NARAL world and in the pro-abort world that’s nothing but a potential illness, an “unviable tissue mass.” It is nothing. It’s not there until the mother decides what to do with it.
The Doritos commercial has a pregnant woman getting… What do you call that? (interruption) A sonogram, right. She’s getting a Sonogram, and the husband — typical lug-head, uninterested, wishes he were somewhere else. The husband is eating a bag of Doritos. And the husband notices that as he puts a Dorito in his mouth the baby in the womb as on the sonogram reaches and attempts to reach out of the womb to grab a Dorito. The dad said, “Wait, I didn’t see that.” So he starts moving Doritos around.
He holds another Dorito in his hand, moves it around, the baby arm follows, and the father can’t believe it. And of course the nurse can’t believe it and the mother can’t believe it, and the NARAL people by this point are driven insane because the baby clearly wants a Dorito. And that’s it for them. Now, if you are a certain age, there’s something else about this commercial that will bother you, I guarantee you. Let me see if I nail this. How does that commercial end, Snerdley? Do you remember how that commercial ends? (interruption)
The Dorito, the bag…? The what? (interruption) The wife, the wife is angry at all this. She throws a Dorito, and the baby, you are led to believe, just springs right out of the womb to try to get the Dorito. Now, a lot of people have no problem with the humanization of the fetus. A lot of people think that’s cute, clever. But my guess is you get somebody 65, 70, the idea of that baby propelling itself out, that’s probably what bothered them and made them the most uncomfortable. I’ll bet you that if we could survey that or focus group it, that would be true.
Other than that, it was harmless, it was funny, it was great.
Everybody’s talking about Doritos today, and the NAGs are livid. It was a home run.
Colgate got preachy about water and toothpaste.