I was upset about CBS refusing to run MoveOn's anti-Bush ad during the Super Bowl, but CBS had a persuasive argument: the ad is too political to run during this kind of show, and they have standards. While I haven't seen the MoveOn ad yet (fscking Flash and Quicktime; why not convert the website to EBCDIC?), I and many others do recall seeing somewhat political ads during past Super Bowls, so I kept an eye out for anything remotely political during the festivities. The Super Bowl may not be meant to be watched with a notebook and pencil in hand, but somebody had to do it and I'm strange enough for the job.
So CBS doesn't allow an anti-Bush ad to be shown during the Super Bowl, but they bring in Bush himself for a few words before the game. It starts out as just chatting about sports, but Bush has never been able to give a speech without insinuating something evil about his opponents, and this is no different: "there are some who have sort of soft-pedaled the call" against steroid use. Then in what may or may not be a less direct and more serious insinuation, Bush said he wanted to let the troops in Iraq know that "our country supports them and we're staying with them".
Immediately following Bush's appearance was an H&R Block ad pointing out the size of Bush's tax cut and hawking their loophole-finding services. If this ad was purposefully positioned, that would be another sign of CBS being part and parcel of the Republican Party, but there's no evidence of that. It's just as likely that H&R asked for the position, since the nearness to Bush's appearance might benefit their message as much as Bush's.
Eyebrow-raising chatter from a commentator on the sidelines before the game: "Historically, the Cajuns are proud, hard-working people". That's the French she's referring to; Acadia was a French colony ethnically cleansed by the British during the French and Indian War, and the refugees settled in the French colony of Louisiana. I was also suprised to hear the Texas crowd loudly cheering the Yankee New England team and wondered how many of these people would go home and sneer at Howard Dean (and now John Kerry) for being a Yankee New Englander. I was mulling over some sarcastic lines to write if Carolina beat the Patriots, especially if it was on a Delhomme to Muhammad pass, but that didn't happen, largely because Muhammad was being oppressed by the Law (first name Ty). Also noted was an ad for French Lake, Indiana.
During the pregame festivities, Toby Keith played his anti-justice, pro-lynching song "Beer for my Horses", but heck, it's a good tune. Before the national anthem, the announcers spoke about U.S. soldiers "protecting our freedom" but cut away to a shot of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.
The halftime show flagrantly promoted the fuck-everything-in-sight agenda with cheerleaders stripping to their underwear and prancing around, climaxing in the pro-rape duet with dance moves plagiarized from National Geographic and with Justin Timberlake making Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a decent gentleman by comparison. Y'all know what happened to that. A notable exception to the halftime show's warped vision of sexuality was Kid Rock who merely wore a U.S. flag poncho and reportedly threw it on the ground, but I didn't see that.
As for the ads, there was a Pepsi ad promoting copyright infringement, a Philip Morris ad advocating against smoking, a truth.org ad advocating against smoking (shards of broken glass on a stick), an hivaids.org ad which advocated something or else I wouldn't have noted it but can't remember what, and an anti-drug ad that was probably from the U.S. government, but I didn't note the source.
All in all, I'll have to clear CBS of charges of partisanship on account of insufficient evidence. The MoveOn ad would probably have been measurably more political than anything else I saw. Probably the most political thing said during the game was when my mom noted that one of the team owners "looks like Newt Gingrich's mother married Bush's mother", surely a verbal goof for these times.
New evidence supporting CBS's character is their refusing to run a Medicare ad produced by the same PR firm working on Bush's reelection campaign and whose claims are being disputed by some Democrats. Note also that CBS was the station which cancelled "The Reagans" because it didn't deify the man enough. Make of it all what you will; I'll sit back and keep my eyes open.
Posted by Warrior Tang at February 14, 2004 11:45 AM