THE SUPERBOWL presents itself annually as a grand big colourful metaphor for American life. In this, the first celebration of the age of Obama, the themes are disparate and the times are desperate. The Cardinals of Arizona and the Steelers of Pittsburgh are just bit players and ciphers in a bigger national drama.
In Tampa, the host town, the embedded media is despairing of finding revellers to interview and high rollers to fondle.
The assembled hackery have taken to interviewing forlorn hot-dog vendors and as yet untouched hookers about the grim realities of the Depression Bowl.
The dawgs are defunct and the women are, what? Delayed? And yesterday it rained.
Times are so bad that Bruce Springsteen has agreed to play the half-time show. In happier times the Superbowl celebrated the baring of Janet Jackson’s left nipple in what was described with military precision as a wardrobe malfunction.
Now there’s a darkness on the edge of town and Bruce is here to sing about it.
Tampa? The town got itself geed up for a week-long fiesta but is now hoping for a busier than usual Sunday afternoon. The economic activity generated is reckoned to be down to $150 million for the week. Miami, the last Florida town to host a Superbowl just two years ago, generated $197 million.
The large corporations are still paying $3 million a shot for the 30- second Superbowl slots, but in doing so they remind the shuddering populace of cartoon figures whose legs and feet keep moving for a few seconds after they have run out over the edge of the canyon. Catching on a little too late, the corporations have announced that their ads will be more straightforward and in keeping with the spirit of the bad times.
Several big organisations who traditionally throw lavish Superbowl parties on the week of the game have scrapped them either through lack of interest, or lack of funds. Those of us who had been looking forward to the Playboy Superbowl Party find ourselves with our things ironed, but with no place to go, not even the Sports Illustrated party which has also been cancelled.
And then there is the minor subplot of the game itself. Pittsburgh from the icy old steelmills playing Arizona, a franchise which has moved ever more southwards in its long and determinedly unavoidable history.
In the first weeks of this epochal presidency it is taken as a sign that the Steelers are led to the Superbowl by only the third African American head coach to take a team to the Superbowl. Given black domination of the playing numbers within the pro game that figure is truly shocking. That Mike Tomlin is also the youngest Superbowl head coach ever though provides a little hope. He will be around for a long time to come.
The game kicks off at 6pm local time in Florida. Almost 100 million Americans will gather around the television to partake of the sacraments of Bud and nachos and to feel part of a ritual which mirrors their lives as often as it offers an escape from them. There will be more spectacle and better fireworks in Croke Park tonight, but that’s not the point.
It’s America’s depression. The rest of us just live in it.