What's Next? Occupy the Super Bowl, of Course

While blowing all of the inappropriate anti-American, anti-capitalist dog whistles to incite the Left into reflexive action, Dave Zirin at The Nation casts the Super Bowl as basically everything the left hates about America.

Cue angry Union worker: “Upsetting the Super Bowl– I couldn’t care less. This is about my life and my family.” –Lou Feldman, IBEW local 668.” But that’s just the opening salvo. A good Leftist can never go wrong banging on the military, let alone capitalism.

The sheer volume of the Super Bowl is overpowering: the corporate branding, the sexist beer ads, the miasma of Madison Avenue-produced militarism, the two-hour pre-game show. But people in the labor and Occupy movements in Indiana are attempting to drown out the din with the help of a human microphone right at the front gates of Lucas Oil Stadium.

Lest you think the left is merely anti-football, the stakes are somewhat greater than that for them and always political.

The Republican-led state legislature aims to pass a law this week that would make Indiana a “right-to-work” state.

And of course, it is a presidential election year, so let’s work in a little 1% talk, connecting it to Romney, as they presume he’ll be the GOP nominee. Emphasis mine. We already know the Left’s not big on private property. It means less for the state!

The Super Bowl is perennially the Woodstock for the 1 percent: a Romneyesque cavalcade of private planes, private parties and private security. Combine that with this proposed legislation, and the people of Indiana will not let this orgy of excess go unoccupied. Just as the parties start a week in advance, so have the protests. More than 150 people–listed as seventy-five in USA Today, but I’ll go with eyewitness accounts–marched through last Saturday’s Super Bowl street fair in downtown Indianapolis with signs that read, “Occupy the Super Bowl,” “Fight the Lie” and “Workers United Will Prevail.” Occupy the Super Bowl has also become a T-shirt, posted for the world to see on the NBC Sports Blog.

The protests also promise to shed light on the reality of life for working families in the city of Indianapolis. Unemployment is at 13.3 percent, with unemployment for African-American families at 21 percent. Two of every five African-American families with a child under 5 live below the anemic poverty line. Such pain amidst the gloss of the Super Bowl and the prospect of right-to-work legislation is, for many, a catalyst to just do something.

Forget that Obama’s policies have failed miserably and that he’s driven up the debt astronomically, spending billions and billions of dollars on ineffectual projects and initiatives driven by consistently failed Keynesian economic theory – that can’t possibly be the problem. It would require a painful honesty for the mis-named reality-based community to actually face reality. Instead, they’ll just blame everything from Madison Avenue, Republican politics, the military, the wealthy and … and now, football. That’s right! Why, if only America played even more soccer I bet all our problems would be solved. So much for reality-based.