Michael Novak, Like Hank Williams Jr., Is Ready for Some Football
Over at National Review, Michael Novak is ready for some football, which he sez possesses "inherent beauty." But instead of seeing super-charged, steroid-driven modern-day gladiators dispalying "the love of brothers for one another," whaddya get? Anti-religious cheesecake at half time. As the off-season commences, he channels Allan Bloom and asks the tough questions:
Why…has the NFL been so dense as to allow its halftime show, year after year, to be a celebration of decadence and degradation?
If the moral morons the NFL hires to produce these shows set out to dramatize the last days of the Roman empire in all its legendary sickness, what would they do differently? Who are these seemingly drugged, indifferent, writhing pagan figures they now throw around the platform? These are not living human beings in action, these are sacks of flesh, writhing, grinding, pawing, acting out no higher appeal than bodily functions. They evoke no virtues of the human spirit. It is as if they wish to suffocate any spark of Jewish or Christian womanhood and manhood. It is as if they mean to corrupt, seduce, degrade. A more radically anti-Jewish and anti-Christian assault, embodying the sort of Wagnerian images of pagan disgust and decay that enraptured Hitlerian audiences, would be hard for them to produce.
Novak's final solution to halftime hell?
Why doesn't the NFL stage a ten-year sequence of halftime shows that tell the great story of the Founding of our nation? For this story embodies all the virtues required by championship football, and many others besides.
For a look at how manhandling women fits into championship 'ball, go here.
