The Statist Bowl 

by Marcus Epstein

The origin of football as we know it came from government intervention.  In 1905 Teddy met with the presidents of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton and urged them to radically change the rules of football.  The previous year, 18 people were killed and 159 were seriously injured while playing the game.  Roosevelt threatened to ban it if they did not comply with his demands. The college presidents obliged, and the forward pass and many other new rules came into existence.

After watching the Super Bowl, it is clear little has changed.  Before the game started, Sir Paul McCartney treated us to a lovely song about how we are fighting for freedom and how much he loves the war.  Ironically the only war this country ever fought for freedom was against Britain, but that’s really beside the point.

The “very special” halftime show was corny but relatively benign, with U2 singing with the names of the 9-11 victims in the background.  The show was filled with patriotism, with the Irish Bono revealing an American flag lining in his jacket, and a reenactment of the flag raising at Iwo Jima. 

Throughout the game, plenty of players gave their support to our glorious war, and we were shown clips of our soldiers overseas.

But clearly the worst part was the ads.  As usual, the anti-smoking Nazis flooded us with their propaganda.  Phillip Morris had two ads against itself in an attempt to appease the government and the anti-tobacco lobby.  Meanwhile, The Truth Campaign had two ads demonizing the tobacco industry.  The concept this time was the terrible things tobacco companies put in their cigarettes just to be evil.  One of the ads stated that some companies put ammonia in their cigarettes.  Because ammonia is also in fecal matter, The Truth Campaign tells us that we are virtually smoking poop.  By this logic, we could say that drinking soda is like drinking urine because water is an ingredient in both.

The Truth Campaign is a funny outfit.  They make themselves appear to be a grass roots group of teenagers out to spread the word about the evils of big tobacco companies, combining anti-capitalist, victimologist, and hypochondriac public health rhetoric together.  Of course one would wonder where these teenagers got the millions of dollars to fund ads during the Super Bowl.  In reality, The Truth Campaign is a product of the American Legacy Foundation, which was “established in March 1999 as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between a coalition of attorneys general in 46 states and five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry” and “funded primarily by payments designated by the settlement.”  According to The Truth’s site, they also “steal money from our friend Rich Mackin's top desk drawer.  There's usually a wad of bills in there.  Mostly ones, though.”  What a bunch of crazy kids.

The concept is pure genius. After looting the tobacco industry for billions upon billions of dollars, the state decides to create an independent (and therefore completely unaccountable) organization to further slander the industry and hope to create enough support for even more lawsuits. 

But The Truth ads were not nearly as ridiculous as the two put out by the President's Office of National Drug Control Policy that linked terrorism to drug use, which cost nearly $3.5 million of taxpayer money.  The logic for this outrageous assertion was that some terrorists make their money by drug trafficking, so by using drugs that may or may not have originated from terrorists, you are supporting terrorists.  While it is true that many terrorist organizations get their money from the drug trade, the real question to ask is why do terrorist decide to get into that business as opposed to, say, selling used cars.  It is nearly impossible to produce many illicit drugs in the United States and most western nations without getting caught.  Thus, the black market for importing these drugs creates high profit margins.  Of course, most people are dissuaded by the harsh penalties from entering the drug trade, but terrorists who are willing to kill themselves for their cause aren’t.  If the government ended the war on drugs, terrorists would be cut off from one of their main sources of funds.  

One might also wonder if the government was fighting terrorism by giving billions of dollars to the Taliban because they aided us in the drug war.  If doing drugs is supporting the terrorists, then so is paying taxes.

The Super Bowl was one of the great achievements of American civil society.  All Americans would come together not for one of the state’s secular holidays, but for an event created by private enterprise.  Even if you did not like football, everyone could enjoy the innovative commercials.  Unfortunately, the government has decided to corrupt it with their lies and propaganda.  

February 7, 2002