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Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down at the Super Bowl

 The Monica Lewinsky scandal broke five days before Super Bowl XXXII. It was a good week to be covering the game, as it was a sanctuary of football insanity within the storm of national insanity. Aside from a plethora of dirty jokes, the hardworking (honest!) hacks of the sports media were able to ignore what now is an increasingly forgotten historical blip.

But the Super Bowl encompasses far more than mere football, which is why the ads cost so much. And pols are sort of human beings, as eager to participate in one of our society's best parties as anyone else. So early risers were treated to a strange sight in the lobby of the main media hotel on Super Sunday morning.

Workmen were busily removing the Super Bowl-themed decorations in a corner of the lobby. In their place, other hotel staff members were setting up overstuffed imitation leather chairs, a heavy wooden desk, and fake bookshelves complete with fake books. TV network employees were placing lights and cables around the area.

They were all building a set, designed to accommodate some of our country's more prominent elected officials. They were all of course dying to get on the Sunday morning Washington blather shows and blather about this latest crisis of the Republic. Yet at the same time, they were not eager to let their constituents learn they'd been whooping it up at the Super Bowl rather than attending to weighty affairs of state. So where just the night before there'd been pictures of John Elway and Brett Favre, now there was an "important pol's office."

Twenty-five years later, the Republic survives. That's probably because hotel security didn't let any fans wearing Broncos or Packers jerseys wander into camera view.

posted by Michael Gee @ 10:13 AM