No, I'm not talking about marijuana grown on the steppes of Russia. Actually it's a stolen line from Bill Maher's New Rules last Friday, the last rule actually, and it is fucking brilliant. Bill's final rule was a comparison of the haves to the have-nots, using Major League Baseball (haves) and the NFL. In MLB, each team sucks up all the money possible from TV contract, ticket sales, merchandising, etc. In the NFL, this money is mostly put into a large "commie pot" and in a share-the-wealth, socialistic move the booty is divided up between ALL the teams. Guess which sport is on the up slope and which is on the down slope? Guess which sport has, for the most part, the same old tired teams in the playoffs each year? The New York Yankees have a payroll of 200+ million. The Pittsburgh Pirates, a payroll of 60 million. They will NEVER be playing each other in the World Series. However, the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers are in the Super Bowl - and playing a team from a mid-size Wisconsin town called Green Bay! The New York Jets didn't make it. Parity exists in the NFL. In MLB, it's every team for itself and fuck the rest of you. Sound familiar have-nots?
There are, no doubt, millions of super pro-capitalistic, anti-socialistic men that would tell you thew NFL IS the best sport. It's certainly the most watched. What would they have to say about this sharing the wealth situation?
The new Republican House majority will soon get a lesson in the haves versus the have-nots. How interesting it will be to watch as they decide which federal programs, subsidies and agencies to cut to fix the government's spending problem. Which senior assistance hand-outs will be slashed, thereby enraging the tea-party demographic of retired old white people driving around in their medicare purchased scooters? Which farm subsidy cut will put a bunch more poor farmers out to pasture? With the extension of the existing tax rates, the cuts MUST be enormous to get even close to taming the yearly deficit. It's gonna get ugly, and when the masses of the ever shrinking middle-class wake up to the fact that the deficit is going to be tamed by cutting their programs/entitlements, not the defense contractors, big oil and bankers (hey, the House is under Republican control), ugly might not be an adequate description. Of course, it's just as likely very little will be cut as the Repubes will find they don't have the spine to do it. And down the road the deficit can will roll, again.
I didn't know that about the NFL and MLB, but it makes sense. Even the sport of football itself is more socialist: with the exception of the quarterback, there is little emphasis on individual players and more emphasis on team cooperation. Compare this to baseball--basically all individual performance--and their absurd obsession with meticulous individual statistics.
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