Are You Ready For The Healing?!

Tonight, with great fanfare, they are re-opening the Superdome for football. They are pulling out all the stops, making a night of entertainment out of it. Goo Goo Dolls, Green Day, and U2 will be performing, pregame. The latter two will even play a new song; something about saints. Then, of course, the football and all the inevitable talk about how special this is. How – for the people of Louisiana – this is their Super Bowl.

But something’s not right. This “eventification” of tonight’s game smells bad to me. If the Superdome had simply been the site of an American tragedy, then memorializing it, and moving on, might feel OK. But that building is the site and the symbol of one of this country’s most horrifying failures. It was a destination of last resort, where the most desperate could go and wait to die. Those who died inside or near the Dome were victims of involuntary manslaughter through the criminal negligence of our federal government. That’s something you don’t put behind you or forget, or heal with football and a blowout pregame show. It’s disgusting and crass, how the television industry and corporations (like the NFL) fatten their wallets and goose their ratings by attaching empty words like “remembering” and “healing” to their televised all-star suckfests.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Living In Fame from the album Sandinista! by Clash, The

Comments

[joel]

very well said. now if only one of the 10,000 sportcasters (5,000 from espn) covering the event would echo your sentiments. it is a great sign of hope that 1.8 million dollars was put into fixing one roof, but it seems like there are a lot more to go.Also strange that there is a Bush there tonight, one that has already done more for that community in a few months than the President has done in a year.

Ok back to making fun of people, the Goo Goo Dolls come on- I thought we were trying to get away from tragedies.