Johnette Howard and Christine Brennan

Dear Christine--

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So you hate the Super Bowl too?! Congratulations! But are you sure you're a Republican? The Super Bowl should be right in any good Republican's ideological wheelhouse. Big. Expensive. Run by lots of white guys. Lots of bragging about the restricted access.

I'm so tired of the way they make football a religious experience during Super Bowl week. The games weren't even over last Sunday and already the networks were showing those dreamy video montages set to music and accompanied by the de rigueur basso profundo voice-over: "AND ON THE SEVENTH DAY, GOD CREATED THE SUPER BOWL--AND THAT CREAMY SPINACH DIP THAT EVERYONE LOVES. AND HE SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD."

I hate the Super Bowl, all right. Which actually seems like a good reason to go and write about it. But, like you, I'm not going to cover it this year. I have a theory about it, though. I don't think it's an accident that the game usually stinks. I think the Super Bowl's history of flopping is the cosmic payback for all the squandered energy that true football fans devote to the rest of the season. And I think football widows--male or female--intuitively know that. That's why they all go along with throwing Super Bowl Sunday parties.

What they're really celebrating is the fact that the game is going to be a big fat bust that couldn't possibly justify the excess and hype surrounding it. That's why you find people who won't even watch a game the rest of the year totally mesmerized by the Super Bowl. There's something about seeing the sport unspooling before your eyes that feels strangely ... cathartic. Almost hypnotizing. Think about it. Two teams on a screen going back and forth, back and forth, like a swinging watch.

As for what you said about Georgia, the Rams owner--was that really Georgia Frontiere who said women sportswriters don't need equal access to the locker room? And all this time, I thought that was Antonin Scalia in drag!

Scalia is one of yours, by the way. A Republican Supreme Court nominee. As much as I admire your willingness to out yourself in your last message as everyone's token Republican friend (including mine), I personally would rather not reveal whether I'm a Democrat or Republican before the www.World readership. To me, it's like admitting you used to date someone years ago who, you now realize, is a total loser. The next question you have to ask yourself is what does that say about you?

An example: I remember being spellbound by some of the speechmaking during the first Democratic convention where Clinton was nominated, mostly because he and many of the other speakers were trumpeting an inclusive social agenda again and they were mentioning people who'd been ignored in the rhetoric of the Bush years (Daddy Bush. Not George W.). But then Clinton went and--ahem--didn't have sex with "that woman," Monica. Now he's still got his job but poor Monica can't even land a weight-loss ad. (Did you read that the other day?) How long before being Lewinsky'd becomes a verb, same as FedExing something?

Like you, I was disappointed to see that George W. said Roe vs. Wade was "a reach." But I don't think he's going to stop there. On the front page of today's New York Times, there was a teaser to a story on an inside page that read, "Traveling Light: Gov. George W. Bush of Texas is wary of picking up any ideological baggage that could weigh him down come fall." All I could think of was, "Wow. God forbid people think you actually believe in something."

Maybe the point I'm trying to make is the presidential campaign has become the Super Bowl of electoral politics. A big fat overblown mess that's destined to disappoint us because it will never live up to the hype.

But all of this reminds me of your telling me a story once about seeing Al Gore outside a movie theater in Washington, D.C., and introducing yourself as an interested voter--and not a Republican mole who was plotting his demise.

Remember that? Or would you rather change the subject?

Johnette

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