I’m gauging my rooting interest for Super Bowl LVIII. Now that the Buffalo Bills and Detroit Lions are not in contention, I have to recalibrate.
For the NFC, there’s the San Francisco 49ers. The team has won five Super Bowls. But they’ve won none since the end of the 1994 season, losing after 2012 and 2019, the latter to the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-20. If the 49ers win, they’ll tie the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots with six. I liked the team in the Joe Montana and Steve Young years.
My parents visited San Francisco in the late 1960s for my father’s business trip, which they enjoyed, in no small part because of this incident. My sister Leslie and I went there in the late 1980s and enjoyed the place. And my favorite baseball player was stationed in centerfield there for several years.
TS & TC
My singular pull toward the Chiefs involves the guano-crazy theories about a billionaire singer dating a Chiefs player.
“Theories about Ms. Swift are prevalent online, but suggestions about what her political motivations are, in terms of her relationship with the N.F.L., were promoted last month by the Fox News political commentator Jesse Watters.
“‘Have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?’ Mr. Watters said during a broadcast. ‘Well, around four years ago, the Pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting.'”
From Newsnation: “On Newsmax, a conservative news network, one host took the Taylor Swift chatter to the level of obsession, decrying what he termed the ‘idolatry’ surrounding her and claiming it is sinful. Meanwhile, on One America News Network, host Alison Steinberg labeled Swift’s relationship with [Travis] Kelce a psychological operation (psyop), characterizing the entire spectacle as ‘bread and circuses on steroids.'”
Yes, there are TS experts.
On Politico, Swift expert Brian Donovan explains in detail why the political right is targeting a rich, heteronormative pop star. “I think there is a cyclical reaction happening where we saw with the Barbie movie and with the Eras Tour, a kind of woman-centered cultural aesthetic take hold of the American imagination. And I think there’s a ton of backlash to that driven by real basic sexism and misogyny…
“I think what irritates conservatives the most is that this attractive, talented, wholesome, white, successful, Christian, self-made billionaire woman is somehow not on their side. I guess that’s because she is also intelligent.”
Oh, and she just made Grammy history with her fourth Album of the Year win. Maybe George Soros arranged that.