Why are we seeing George Bush on TV every two hours for nine or ten days at a time, like some kind of mutated Mr. Rogers clone? Something is dangerously wrong in any country where a monumentally Failed backwoods politician can scare our national TV networks so totally that they will give him anything he wants.
The answer to that one comes in two parts. One is that Bush will have to run for reelection next year, which three months ago seemed like a harmless waltz—but which is now looking like a dangerous gang fight that Bush might not win, because his overall game plan for Iraq was so hopelessly flawed that it could never have been successful. It was arrogant and ignorant and stupid, and now the vultures are coming home to roost.
Tragic, eh? No. In fact it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. I believe very strongly that George Bush can and shall be beaten like a gong in next year’s extremely important election, where he won’t be the only jackass politician running for his life.
Who gave George Bush permission to preempt and butt into NFL football games and turn pregame ceremonies into some half-bright rave about rebuilding a nation that we just bombed back into the Stone Age? What kind of cowardly swine would freely give $25,000,000 worth of commercial time to any political candidate in a presidential election year?
How about the greed-blind Commissioner of the National Football League? Does that sound right? You bet it does, Bubba. It was Paul Tagliabue who let the egg-sucking weasel from Texas into the henhouse, because he thought it was necessary at the time.
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My darkest fear right now is that we will be seeing George W. Bush on NFL TV every Sunday for the rest of this year and far into the winter and maybe all year long next year until election day rolls around, constantly jabbering about how his jackass war on a nation of Muslims is joined at the hip with the nature of football in America and especially the NFL. If you love to watch anything that looks like professional American football, you will also love the brutal culture of War and all the murderous violence that goes right along with it. Right. In war you do 200 push-ups a day, and in pro football you do about 50. In war you carry a nine-pound full-auto assault rifle at all times, and in football you carry a pointed leather ball.
They are both profoundly violent and cruel and utterly unforgiving, and they both require public brutality by people wearing elaborate uniforms. I have tried them both for long periods of time, and I frankly see no basic similarity at all, beyond the powerful desire to hurt people.
—September 8, 2003