Bogus Trial Sidelined in Time for Spectacle

2/1/2020

Wait, no Lizzo?

I did the healthy thing and did not watch a moment on Sunday night. While I read a book, the next generation kept me posted -- good reviews for the ladies, terrible reviews for the TV babblers. Some of our family were early Mahomes fans; I'm happy for them. Ditto for my friend Bill Wakefield, ex-Met, who chose his home town over his adopted Bay Area. I have that righteous (probably smug) feeling I have on Jan. 1 after going to sleep before midnight..
Now I have a three-word mantra for other true believers:
Pitchers And Catchers!!!
* * *
After covering 10 or 11 Super Bowls (*), I still did not truly understand the broad appeal of the event -- until Friday evening.

While watching the Republican majority in the Senate dump on the impeachment trial, I became aware of the magnetic pull of the Big Game on everybody – not just the deaf, dumb and blind Senate majority but even the broadcasters on cable news, who referred to the Super Bowl in just about every other sentence.

People made jokes about home-region teams -- nicknames, rivalries, ancient games -- as if that mattered more than a real hearing, a real trial.

I got the impression that even news TV people with connections had the promise of a ticket and a flight to South Florida, as long as the Senate did not take its job seriously and keep working into Saturday. Plus, four Democrat senators could now rush out to Iowa to peddle their wares before the caucus on Monday.

Take it from me, up close the Super Bowl is just another football game – but with more logistical annoyances, more noise, more stupid stuff at halftime, more clichés, and in the end just a bunch of running and passing and tackling and blocking and kicking and commercial timeouts.

It really isn’t much of a consolation that the Senate cannot officially toss the impeachment into the Dumpster until Wednesday.

Does this mean Trump won’t swagger around South Florida on Sunday….and strut into the State of the Union speech on Tuesday….and make pointed remarks about how the Democrats couldn’t prove a thing. He’s been getting away with stuff all his life. But at least his latest escape won’t be official until Wednesday.

The big game this weekend is that Americans can ignore the reality that Trump forced Ukraine to survive without promised weapons for many crucial days last summer while Trump pursued a personal and political goal and jeopardized Ukrainian people and befouled the honorable career of a diplomat assigned to Ukraine

Thanks to the Republican majority in the Senate – who will be pursued by emerging facts in days and weeks to come -- the menace and the lies get to take a few days off now.

Democracy and justice have been kneed in the groin, have “had their bell rung,” as the football broadcasters used to bray, have been tripped and elbowed, have been clotheslined by a neck-high tackle.

The big game will be run by tighter rules than the Trump Frolics, but that makes sense.
After all, what’s more important - an impeachment trial or a Super Bowl?
* * *
(*) -- I originally thought I covered nearly two dozen Super Bowls, but it just seemed that way. When I checked, it was only 10. Maybe 11. Some of them numbed my mind but I do have memories: Preservation Hall jazz in 1970; having to trek over snowy fields because VP Bush's arrival halted all traffic around the Silverdome in 1982; John Riggins' superb traction on a slick Rose Bowl field in 1983; enjoying the Bears, my favorite childhood team, winning in NOLA in 1986; and watching southern drivers try to negotiate icy interstates before Atlanta game in 2000. Who says there is no fun at the Super Bowl?

Hansen Alexander

2/1/2020 09:10:07 pm

George the former Super Bowl columnist,

Both an amusing and serious take contrasting the concern with the US football championship and the historical farce of Trump's impeachment. The first ever without witnesses, as I report in an upcoming book, as Clinton's had 3 and Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial 41. I've been thinking something similar in recent years: if the SEC in Washington were taken as seriously as the instant replays of the Southeastern Conference our citizenship would be greatly elevated.

My friend, I have not forgotten that your year in the sun began with a Super Bowl in Miami. This rift, by the way, is no less graceful or well written than that book.

Which is why it is such a pleasure to read. For me, columnists have always been about the writing. Because that is what gives me pleasure.

Yours,
Hansen

Tom Schwarz link

2/1/2020 10:26:15 pm

Yet another brilliant take on current events AND one of the best Replys I've ever read! Thanks George and Hansen

George Vecsey

2/2/2020 08:38:06 am

Tom, in the real game of football, I can reconstruct all eight World Cup finals I covered -- Zidane's gorgeous game in 1998, his ugly head butt in 2006. FIFA has been cluttering up the stark simplicity of a final by aping the Super Bowl. Just march the teams out for the anthem, you dopes.

George

2/2/2020 08:35:53 am

Hansen, thanks for the plug. Actually, my 1986 "diary" begins with Orange Bowl (Oklahoma-Penn State) but soon gets to New Orleans, watching Walter Payton not score a touchdown in a romp. Great party thrown by Dick Schaap at K-Paul, lots of bold-name celebs.

Hansen Alexander

2/2/2020 02:46:59 pm

LOL. Well George,

It's good your memory is still functioning, even if mine isn't!

Warmly,
Hansen

George

2/2/2020 03:06:01 pm

Hansen: I had to look it up. One clue leads to a dozen memories. GV

bruce

2/2/2020 01:16:09 pm

hansen,

'US football championship' ?!

i've had a few emails with george about this.

you're being a lot more modest than many of your countrymen/women and broadcasters.

it is the WORLD championship.

because, you know, it's made up of american only teams with, probably, 98.50% american players.

there is a canadian starting for the chiefs' offensive line.

he's a doctor, as in medical. a grad of the universite laval in quebec city...home to canada's top football program.

supposed to be a good game today. we might hear that a record 120,000,000 or so tuned in.

good number but about 500,000,000 less than might watch the real madrid/barcelona el clasico.

cheers,

bruce

John McDermott

2/2/2020 12:33:37 am

The Super Bowl and Trump. Both bloated and much overrated.

George Vecsey

2/2/2020 08:40:38 am

John, don't stay up late where you are to watch it. I watched a game in London in 2003....saw it in my hotel room, with Brit commentators. They knew the game quite well. I imagine you can find plenty of Italian expertise on the Super Bowl, But why? GV

bruce

2/2/2020 01:01:55 pm

george,

i had the opposite when i lived in japan.

it was on at 830 monday morning.

and if you keep up this anti super bowl screed, i see you facing charges of treason.

as was once said, it's not life or death, it's more important than that.

bruce

Randolph

2/2/2020 08:58:21 am

George,
Thanks once again. Yes my friend, football is so much more important than a silly impeachment parade.
Here is a quote I think you might like:
"I was astonished to see a Senate which I had long, long come to revere stand mute," he said. "The men who were there and the one woman who was there when I came to the Senate would not have stood still. How changed this Senate was. How intimidated the members were. How afraid they were, many of them, of being called 'unpatriotic' if they didn't support the commander in chief."

Yes it sounds like he is talking about Trumpty Dumpty. But in fact this is Senator Robert Byrd talking about W Bush, A.k.a.The Shrub, as the United States Senate allowed our country to march to war in Iraq.
Our current president has taken us to a new low, but we have been slipping and sliding that way for a good many years.
Anyway, keep breathing and keep writing.
RF

Gene Palumbo

2/2/2020 06:05:54 pm

The Byrd quote is enough to make one say, "Where is Sam Ervin, now that we really need him?"

The quote provided by Bruce -- "it's not life or death, it's more important than that" -- got me recalling another one, attributed to Vince Lombardi (supposedly Nixon was very fond of it): "Winning isn't the main thing; it's the only thing."

bruce

2/2/2020 06:13:29 pm

gene,

the lombardi quote that always sticks with me is, 'fatigue makes cowards of us all'....i think that's it.

the one about lombardi that sticks is from willie davie, the defensive end.

he was asked if lombardi treated black and white players equally.

he said, 'yes. he treats us all like dogs'....think that's right.

doing them from memory so i'll blame george or you if i get 'em wrong.

bruce

Alan Rubin link

2/3/2020 04:21:46 pm

I only watch football if I’m visiting my daughter’s family in Madison, WI. We skipped it this year, but it is usually for Thanksgiving, which includes the Packers and the UW Badgers.

However, I was curious to see Mahomes play as much was written about his coolness under pressure and ability to make the play. However, the game was only on paid services like Hulu and I do not watch even when the games are free.

Jennifer Lopez’s halftime performance received mostly favorable reviews, but her role as a pole dancer in the movie Hustler probably sent a much stronger message.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Bogus Trial Sidelined in Time for Spectacle

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