February 7, 2005

Dynasty

The Patriots won last night. The Eagles lost. Paul McCartney, even at age sixty-five, safely breasted this half-time simply by carting out his old hits and propping them up with light and sound and fireworks all together with a delirious drummer who seemed at times entirely beside himself trying to keep up.

Reassuringly, the teeners screamed ever so loud for Paul as their parents did for the Beatles forty years ago. After all, those tunes do remain singable, though quite a bit more so apart from all the noisy interference.

It was the Patriots’ third Super Bowl win. According to the sports commentators, this makes them a dynasty (and in a lot fewer years than it ever took the Chinese to come up with one). But dynasty is, I suppose, the right word.

Football is dynamite in our time, all about power. Violence is the name of the game — on the field, in the commercials, on the bandstand, certainly in the Super Bowl.

There must be a parable in there somewhere, even if I have to force one. The Patriot Act and all its restrictions has surely got more press of late than that good old American bird, so long a symbol of freedom.

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