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A thing that struck me today is like...there was an article talking about how the speaker of the house didn't like the Superbowl pick. And it's like, who let these fucking political dorks so far out of their lane?!
Like did Newt Gingrich like the act at the 1996 Superbowl? I don't know, and I don't give a fuck. When did everyone start to give a fuck about these stupid asshole's opinions on entertainment?
Go piss up a tree you dumb fucks. Oh, and btw, do your fucking jobs. The government is shut and you're busy talking about your fucking music preferences. Nobody cares.
When you stand for nothing popular, you need to distract people with a culture war. It's all by design, they are utilizing rage bait to keep us from realizing they are actively fucking us.
Its culture war bullshit to feed the rabid base. Speaker Johnson doesn’t give a fuck about the Super Bowl halftime but he sure as shit knows his drooling rabid MAGA fanbois love football more than almost anything and so if he can stir up controversy around it and center himself as an force against “corruption” of their favorite pastime it will curry favor with them for whatever else he wants, because they trust him now
This isn't new. People keep asking celebrities about things they have no expertise on, and politicians have been more celebrity than political servant for a long time it seems.
I don't care about Ariana Grande's opinion on the Trump administration insofar as learning whether or not she's a fascist and I don't care what kind of music my governor thinks slaps during halftime.
Nah, it's newer than you think. A lot of it has to do with the rise of the right wing media ecosystem. That's part of why I brought it up in this thread.
Like yes, they were planting the seeds of this with brainless morons like Rush Limbaugh, but their rise to prominence as "cultural critics" was really in the last decade or so.
These dumbass podcast hosts helped immensely with that and so did Trump, who offers his opinion on art and entertainment and thinks it's the only one that matters.
The "left wing" media is somewhat complicit in it too. The American media ecosystem overall has shifted to this reality TV or podcast interview mode, where instead of focusing on politicians doing their fucking job they write up articles about their opinions on arts and entertainment.
The difference being that entertainers use their platform because they think they owe it to their fans. Which is admirable. Is it partially business strategy? No doubt it's part of it.
But politicians are giving their opinions on art and NOT doing their job. Which is what the vast majority of people want. They are doing the opposite of that. So they need to function as their main duties before mouthing off on something that isn't even in their vein.
This is a byproduct of shitty news services. The view from nowhere is basically insulting, and everyone feels it. So people will look for anyone who can explain a newsworthy issue with real (or apparently real) context.
Part of the issue is that pro-sports is heavily integrated into American politics. They're a major font of propaganda for the US government, both domestically and internationally. Olympic Athletes of all stripes are regularly recruited to express American jingoism on an international stage. Military recruiters love to camp out at football games and happily sponsor helicopter landings, 21 gun salutes, and jet flyovers. Well-networked candidates use endorsements by athletes and wear team merch in order to signal their popularity to constituents. Athletes even serve as international ambassadors (Dennis Rodman famously visited North Korea, Herschel Walker and Michelle Kwan are both Trump-era ambassadors in the Caribbean, Mo Farah worked with the UN).
And then there's the graft. Politicians regularly get special accommodations from stadium owners in exchange for kickbacks. Athletes and coaches periodically get elevated to run for office (Colin Alred ran for a Texas Senate seat, Tommy Tuberville currently represents Alabama) and use their college/pro-ball networks to raise money for themselves and their political allies. Franchise owners are, themselves, heavily invested in both lowering taxes/cutting regulations and advancing fascistic ideology.
Sorry. Too much money and influence is trading hands. They can't stop. They won't stop.
Yeah I couldn't take the fucking NFL in general anymore. It became exactly like America: overhyped, pricier by the year while being worse every year, full of stupid drama, and obviously has its best years behind it.
Who wants to put up with three hours of shitty beer and truck commercials for 30 minutes of mediocre action? (A lot of America, I guess... But I can't anymore, this frog hopped out of the pot.)
I mean, the biggest problem with NFL is that a team can realistically only play 12-15 games a year. In baseball, you play 10x as many games. Basketball, marginally less, but you can still run a season for six months, with games multiple times a week.
So tickets can be cheaper and the sport can still be more profitable by year.
The high impact sports are a bad business model. Everything runs downstream of that, since you need to compress more and more of your revenue generation into a tighter timeframe.
Elected representatives in democracies are largely entertainers, comedians, podcasters, and the likes. You can see many examples, i.e. Trump was a TV star at some time.
That's why it's natural for them to continue trying to entertain the people, commenting on everyday things and such, similar to a late-night talk-show.
For the record, Zelenskyy was also a TV personality. You can do a lot better than the bottom of the barrel America. Shame on you all for letting a demented madman to helm the country and dismantle the hard work millions fought and died for over the past 100 years go to waste in the blink of an eye. What a joke of a country.
Citation needed. The last time I checked most politicians were lawyers. Johnson himself started out his career as a lawyer, and he's the primary subject of my rant here.
i don't have a citation, and "largely entertainers" was certainly an overstatement. still, there are many examples, like silvio berlusconi in italy (media mogul), boris johnson in england, trump, ...
There are examples and most of them are terrible leaders. But Johnson isn't a former entertainer and neither are the majority of these asshats.
People need to start telling them to shut up and write laws.
Shut up and do oversight, Johnson, you stupid fuck.