What Martin Luther King Actually Thought About Car Commercials: A different portion of the same Martin Luther King speech used in the recent Dodge RAM commercial.
FIAT CHRYSLER'S 'MARTIN LUTHER KING' AD DRAWS SOCIAL MEDIA BACKLASH, by E.J. Schultz (Ad Age)
The MLK ad drew heat on social media with some critics accusing the automaker of appropriating the civil rights leader's words for commercial gain.
The Progressive Case for the New England Patriots (Seriously), by Dave Zirin (The Nation)
The team referred to as Team Trump is far more complicated than its critics would admit.
Setting aside football franchises named after racial slurs, the New England Patriots are my least favorite team in sports. It’s their annual dominance – now in 2018 it will be eight Super Bowl appearances in 17 years – as predictively monotonous as a metronome. It’s their Hall of Fame head coach, the joyless hooded gnome, Bill Belichick. It’s 40-year-old dreamboat quarterback Tom Brady and his carnival huckster approach to physical health – for $99.99 you too can get the Brady pajamas with “bioceramic particles woven in to reflect back to the body infrared waves.” It’s the way referees seem to love them just a little bit too much for comfort.
The list is long and I know I’m not alone in my disgust. Many have taken our resentments against this team and politicized it, saying in effect that a cheer for the Patriots is a cheer for the Trump agenda. They are viewed as Team Trump because their owner Bob Kraft gave a million bucks to Trump’s inauguration committee and has long touted their friendship. It’s because Belichick wrote a letter of support to Trump that Donald read aloud – almost certainly without Belichick’s approval – where he said, “You’ve proved to be the ultimate competitor and fighter. Your leadership is amazing.”
It’s the “Make America Great Again” hat hanging in Tom Brady’s locker in the summer of 2016 and Brady asking plaintively, “Why is that such a big deal?
For people defending the franchise against these Team Trump charges, it also hasn’t helped that Nazi leaders have said that the Pats are their favorites because they are “consistently NFL’s whitest team.” [That’s not actually true, but facts have never stopped Nazis before.]
Yet I want to make the counter argument to this ...
Paul Tagliabue Yearns for Hall of Fame, but Concussions Tarnish Legacy, by Michael Powell (New York Times)
We reporters can be disagreeable, and who has not uttered words he comes to regret? Let’s step past words and take a close look at Tagliabue’s role in overseeing a decade-long cover-up of the N.F.L.’s destruction of the brains of its players.
Go Other Guys! (Why I’m Rooting for My Team to Lose this Super Bowl Sunday), by Zach Wyner (Medium)
My dad, my brother and I will watch the Super Bowl this Sunday. I’m sure there will be moments when my body and mind will be in conflict. Like I said, Boston sports fandom is a hereditary trait buried deep within my DNA and there will be plenty of Patriots on that field worth pulling for.
But I know what a Patriots victory will bring: Tom Brady, the trophy toothpaste ad, smiling at the center of the grotesque circus. And I feel that, as a true fan of the Patriots, it’s my job to root for their failure with the hope that it might spare them the fetid stench of fascism — a stench that, unlike moisture in a towel, doesn’t evaporate in the Super Bowl’s bright lights.
Pure Bud BS: The Shortest Pour Fool Post Ever
I’ve now been asked, by actual count, thirty-seven times in the past four days what I think of the leaked previews we’ve all seen of Budweiser’s new Super Bowl ad.
I suspect everybody who has asked pretty much knows what my response will be, so let’s wrap this up quickly and get back to being horrified by the shit show in DC.
Brain injuries, the NFL, and my indifference ... to football.
... Finally it has dawned on me that where there was never before very much interest in football on my part, now there's virtually none, and it is the increasingly well-documented, regrettable, lifelong physical toll suffered by the players which is to blame for my turning away.
It isn't just the pros. The more I read about youth football injuries, the greater understanding we have as to how, even only occasionally, difficult subsequent lives, erratic adulthoods, and those suffering from dementia far before their time might be explained.
Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?, by Steve Almond ("Riff" at the NYT Magazine)
... Recently, though, medical research has confirmed that football can cause catastrophic brain injury — not as a rare and unintended consequence, but as a routine byproduct of how the game is played. That puts us fans in a morally queasy position. We not only tolerate this brutality. We sponsor it, just by watching at home. We’re the reason the N.F.L. will earn $5 billion in television revenue alone next year, three times as much as its runner-up, Major League Baseball.
Brain Injuries And The NFL: A Fan's 5 Stages Of Grief, by Gene Demby (National Public Radio)
A few years ago, before "CTE" was as much a part of football conversations as "quarterback rating" or "wild card spot," I had a conversation with some friends about unsettling news stories that linked the sport to brain injury.
As we spoke, an avowed hater of sports piped up. "Football, as it's currently played, is completely indefensible," she said.
I bit my tongue at the moment, but I later talked about it the way any dyed-in-the-wool Eagles fan might: "She hates sports and football! What does she know? These cases could be isolated. And anyway, these dudes play of their own volition!"
I look back on that conversation with a kind of mortification now, given all the stuff we've learned about football-related brain injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy since then. She was right.
Anyone familiar with the Kubler-Ross model would recognize my defensive apoplexy as denial, the first stage of reckoning with a terrible reality. It's followed by anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
Are you ready for some football? What you might not be ready for this Sunday are the family unfriendly commercials that will have parents scrambling to get the remote control. In particular, we have learned that GoDaddy.com commercials cross the line when it comes to the matter of decency.
ROCK President Bryan Wickens stated: "It is a shame that in an event that recognizes the talent, hard work and effort of the players to get to the Super Bowl, there is a company like GoDaddy.com that not only exploits women to sell its product but also does not care that children are in the viewing audience. As parents, we must always be on guard to protect our children from this kind of indecency."
