The Media Goes Geisha For Jerruh

You are looking at the relevant bits of the Lemur's front page from last night, and dammit people, as much as I love C. Montgomery Burns, this pisses me off. It's like the recession never happened, you know? Because it's all about the Lemur's frantic need to glorify the latest architect to their own damned selves, with the full slurpy treatment is given, and the Grey Lady is no better.

Maybe I'm just a raging lefty Eagle fan, but why is everyone taking the $50 prayer position for Jerruh Jones, just because people are finally about to commit an act of It Counts Football in his comically ill-suited stadium? His team is a perpetually overrated collection of turnover prone mediocrities; his stadium might be the biggest celebration of self since San Simeon, and at least San Simeon was meant, at least for a little while, to be a sermi-private residence. We've swallowed federal banking bailouts, 10%+ unemployment and rampaging foreign debt to still worship at the altar of the crazy rich man? Really?


Inside of the next one to three years, while Jones' Boyz canoodle to their usual .500 and third-place record and December collapse (um, because the offensive line is old and thin, and the quarterback is a turnover machine when he doesn't have time to make a decision), this edifice (and the hyperinflationary prices contained within) will become, at best, a non-factor in the performance of the home team. Hell, maybe it even becomes an active detriment, the same way that Lincoln Financial has been to the Eagles, at least in comparison to the Vet.

Perhaps we even get to the point of where California is with it's stadiums, where widespread public distaste and enough other things to do have given the high hard one to team owners looking for new pleasure palaces in Oakland, San Francisco, and led to the continuing lack of NFL football in Los Angeles. And as much as I might sympathize for Seattle Supersonic fans, I suspect the vast majority of the people who actually live there can live without the presence of an NBA team; a similar lack of deprivation in the City of Angels has been going on now for 15 years. Most people there seem actually happy about this, since it means they see games without having to worry about blackouts.

Anyway, back to why the new JerruhDome will hurt the team. It's true for one simple reason: football is a mass appeal game. America is a downsizing nation; it will continue to be that way for, in all likelihood, the rest of my life and yours. We're the new British. (Unless we somehow take the lead in alternative energy sources, and given our failing education system and willingness to throw the poor under the bus at least in comparison to other countries, I'm not counting on it.) That doesn't lend itself to expanding corporate dollars for high rollers, at least not when you've got to fill 80,000+ seats with it. And even if you do find that many suckups with money, it's not certain that they will, you know, cheer.

Meanwhile, Our Media continues to fellate fools with money as if they were Magical Beings, rahter than, well, snake oil salesman and con men. Maybe they are all hoping that if they make Jerruh happy enough, he'll buy them stuff, too.

Cowboy Fans, Fellow Americans, and Football Lovers, the second law of political science applies: the people get the government / stadiums / teams they deserve.

And if any player hits the screen during the game, he'll earn the love and admiration of every *real* fan out there...