By Steve Rhodes
* The Super Bowl’s Military Fables.
Seeing Lt. Nadd at the big game was an audacious triple lindy of product placement. You had the military, the NFL and, of course, the smooth taste of Budweiser, all in one Fox camera shot of corporate Americana. (Budweiser is actually owned by a Belgian/Brazilian consortium, but details . . . )
* “I Ain’t No Damned Monkey On A String”: The Sadness Of Sweetness After Super Bowl XX.
Valdisseri and McGrane begged Payton to come out of the broom closet. “Walter,” Valdisseri said, “how is it going to look if you don’t talk? Here we just won the first Super Bowl for the Bears, and this should be the highest point of your career. Don’t let your disappointment in your own performance bring down the moment.”
* Janet Jackson: Don’t Blame Super Bowl.
Janet Jackson does not blame the backlash from her 2004 Super Bowl appearance for her subsequent bad album sales.
Janet, the Jacksons’ equivalent of Marilyn Munster, told me the other night that the CDs simply weren’t that good.
Both Damita Jo and Janet were flops. Many people in the music biz attributed her sales decline to her “wardrobe malfunction.”
“Ms. Jackson” disagrees. “I think it was the music . . . The albums weren’t right.
* Windfall For Super Bowl Hosts? Economists Say It’s Overstated.
When cities bid to host the Super Bowl, they agree to an extensive list of specifications, which include providing goods and services worth millions of dollars to the N.F.L., all at no cost to the league . . . The bid book shows the host city must provide the N.F.L. with 35,000 parking spaces, thousands of hotel rooms, hundreds of buses and limousines, billboards, security, food and an exemption on paying all sales taxes, among hundreds of other specifications. The phrase “at no cost to the N.F.L.” appears in the book 65 times.
* Why Atlanta Should Honor The Community Destroyed In Its Super Bowl Quest.
City is remembering its civil rights legacy around Super Bowl LIII. But it’s forgetting Lightning, a black community displaced by the legacy of sports.
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Posted on February 3, 2019