Dear Bigmouth Readers ( supposing you A) actually exist, and B) still exist, given our recent unintentional hiatus),
Turns out a lot can happen in 2 months, eh? We could review the litany of catastrophic events cascading down the newswire into the digital puddle that is your idiot box, but it gets awfully depressing incredibly fast. So let's try the shorthand edition: The sky was falling, and fast, until last Tuesday, when we woke up out of our 8-year coma and elected a smart guy with big ears and a funny name. Now most of the world likes us again (European Vacation, anyone?) and the planet may actually continue existing long enough for us to amend the Constitution and elect Schwarzenegger president in 2016 (laugh now, girlie men, but you know it's gonna happen).
So pardon your nascent narrator for abandoning his previous post-a-thon concerning the over-publicized and underwhelming Mr. Favre, but sports have looked about as small as Ralph Nader's chances last Tuesday in the grand scheme of things.
Which, if you think about it, is about right. Reflecting on how my habitual consumption and tracking of daily scores and highlights was quickly replaced by poll numbers and political punditry, I realized something quite profound. It's something that is quite frankly, fairly sacrilegious for a life-long sports fan to admit, but is true nevertheless: Sports and athletes are for men what tabloids and celebrities are for women. It's a nice distraction, a vicarious involvement, a guilty pleasure amidst the gruel and the grind of your daily dullness. And that's all.
So with that admission in the can, I think I speak for all of fan-dom, couch-dom and any other-dom that applies when I ask for a simple favor. Please don't treat our sports news and favorite players like they're bisexual b-list actresses out on an SUV-wrecking coke binge. Yes, it serves the same purpose at the end of the day, but lie to us, would you please? If we wanted to see athletes vamping around with celebrities, we would watch "Dancing with the Stars" willingly instead of pretending that our wives or girlfriends make us do it.
Thank you, and God Bless America.
