Ragnarok vs Trump + Bloomberg-- Over $20 Million Wasted On Super Bowl Ads PLUS... A Bonus Midnight Meme

Trump's Super Bowl ad was rated dead last of 62 ads. He wasted $11 million on something that made people hate him even more than they already do. Bloomberg didn't do much better... just a little better. But Trump was the big 2020 Super Bowl loser.

Thank God for YouTube. Sunday I was able to binge-watch my favorite new Norwegian TV series on Netflix, Ragnarok, which mixes the Climate Crisis with the greatest tale of Norse mythology, Ragnarök, a series of events, including a great battle, foretold to lead to the death of a number of great figures, natural disasters and the submersion of the world in water. How does YouTube figure into this? Aside from watching the duel between the Norse gods and giants, I was eager to see the dueling presidential Super Bowl ads by the feuding conservative assholes, Trump (a former Democrat) and Bloomberg (a former Republican), but without having to watch the Super Bowl.

Yesterday all I could find were the two billionaire former friends-turned-rivals insulting each other like 9 year olds, Trump calling Bloomberg "Mini-Mike" and denigrating short people (Bloomberg is 5'8" and there are tens of millions of male voters who are that size or shorter). Bloomberg responded by pointing out that Trump "is a pathological liar who lies about everything: his fake hair, his obesity, and his spray-on tan... I stand twice as tall as he does on the stage that matters." At least, unlike Randy Newman and Marco Rubio, Bloomberg didn't refer to Trump's abnormally small hands/penis. But this morning I found the ads themselves... on YouTube.

Each asshole spent over 10 million dollars on the ads they ran. I doubt either ad changed a single vote. Both targeted African American voters, a demographic that dislikes-- and rightfully so-- both Trump and Bloomberg. This was one of the two 30 second Trump ads.





And this was the instant Bloomberg campaign spoof of the other Trump ad, which, unfortunately, hasn't been played on TV:





Here's the original 60 second Super Bowl spot that Bloomberg did run. The reaction was largely "meh" and it isn't expected to help him much in the Iowa caucuses tonight:





Politico reported that "Ad experts and political consultants who previewed the ads weren’t all that impressed, suggesting that they were standard political fare that would pale against the flashier, more inventive offerings for which the game is known. 'The goal on the Super Bowl, whether you’re a beer company or an automobile manufacturer or a politician, is to have everybody talking about your ad the next day,' said Fred Davis, a Republican ad-maker and founder of Strategic Perception, a California ad firm. 'This isn’t going to be the Bloomberg ad and that isn’t going to be the Trump ad we saw.'"

The other Trump ad-- an appeal to his base-- which had been released a few days before the game, "took on a more Trumpian-tone," highlighting Trump's specious claims that he is responsible for the country's supposed economic growth, "while cutting between clips of his rallies, military ships and planes and industrial workers. 'And ladies and gentleman, the best is yet to come,' Trump says, closing out the ad as his supporters applaud. If Trump’s Stronger, Safer, More Prosperous spot--clips of his rallies, military ships and planes and industrial workers--is a 30-second shot of 'Everything is great' spin, Bloomberg’s one-minute ad... is a far more somber reminder that the country has some big problems to confront. Bloomberg, a former New York mayor who has made gun control a signature issue, barely speaks in the ad. Instead, it’s narrated by Calandrian Simpson Kemp, a Texas woman whose son, George H. Kemp, was shot to death in 2013. As the camera pans through photos of a young George in football gear, Kemp says: 'When I heard Mike was stepping into the ring, I thought, Now we have a dog in the fight.'"

Davis, who has produced political Super Bowl ads in regional markets, said Trump’s criminal justice ad was a good counter to Bloomberg’s anti-gun spot. It’s likely Trump kept it a secret to generate more buzz and prevent Bloomberg from changing his ad prior to the game, Davis said, adding that Trump may have produced more than one commercial and made a last second call on which to air. The two spots released earlier in the week were duds because they didn't tell viewers anything new or unexpected about the candidates, he said. To get people to put down their beers and chicken wings, the billionaires would have needed to do something surprising or entertaining. For Trump, that could’ve been a commercial showing his humility. Bloomberg, who has long been known as a leading gun control advocate, could’ve highlighted a part of his life the public doesn’t already know about, he added.

Ad-makers don’t think the commercials will sway any voters. But while most people have made up their minds about Trump, who’s a household name, experts say Bloomberg’s ad purchase will give him a little more bang for his buck because he can get his name in front of people who haven’t yet heard of him.

“A huge proportion of Americans don’t even know who Michael Bloomberg is,” said John Geer, dean of Vanderbilt University’s College of Arts and Sciences and a political science professor who has written about presidential ad campaigns. “He’s providing some baseline information for lots of Americans and he’s gained a huge audience. So there's actually much more of an upside as far as just giving people that initial impression of Bloomberg than there is with Trump.”

Bloomberg is betting on a barrage of ads to deliver him the Democratic nomination. The billionaire’s self-funded campaign is expected to drop $300 million on TV spots by March, when he is set to be on the ballot for the first time. And his strategy appears to be working. Though he entered the race much later than other candidates, he now polls about even to Pete Buttigieg and ahead of Sen. Amy Klobuchar in national surveys.

Trump has few political points to gain with his Super Bowl ad, experts said. So why did he spend the money?

“It’s all ego,” said Mark Longabaugh, a partner at Devine Mulvey Longabaugh, a Democratic media consulting firm working with Andrew Yang’s campaign. “He's not going to let Mike Bloomberg advertise in the biggest national sporting event of the year with the biggest audience.”

The L.A. Times reported that Bloomberg "is far outspending all of his Democratic rivals, surpassing $300 million, according to Advertising Analytics. He is skipping the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, plowing his money instead into California, Texas and more than a dozen other states with contests still more than a month away.

...On Saturday, Trump tweeted that “Mini Mike Bloomberg” was wasting his money on advertising, then went on to make his false allegation about the box.

USA Today's AdMeter measured how successful each Super Bowl ad was. Jeep's Groundhog Day was numero uno with an average rating of 7.01, followed by Hyundai's Smart Pahk with a 6.98 average and Google's Loretta close behind with a 6.77 average. The political ads didn't fair as well. In fact, Señor Trumpanzee's Criminal Justice Reform came in dead last with an average rating of 3.33. His pal Bloomberg didn't do much better-- the third to last (#60 out of 62 ads) with an average of 4.23. As for YouTube views, only 11 ads had over 10 million views:

• Amazon- 60.8 million
• Hyundai- 38.6 million
• Genesis- 25.9 million
• Jeep- 25.9 million
• Facebook- 21.8 million
• Budweiser- 14.3 million
• Microsoft- 13.6 million
• Google- 12.5 million
• Cheetos- 11.2 million
• Heinz- 11.0 million
• Olay- 10.2 million

Neither Bloomberg, with 4.3 million views, nor the Evil Orange Blob with less than 137,000 views, was in the ballpark of having produced a successful ad. Trump just managed to beat the utterly lame Avocados from Mexico Shopping Network ad, which was rated better than his #52 with a 4.61 average rating, but only got a bit over 125,000 YouTube views.





Noah couldn't wait for midnight-- and you'll see why tonight-- for this one, so... here's a bonus:

Extra! Extra! Midnight Meme: Special Super Bowl Edition!!!
-by Noah

Hey kids, what time is it?

It's Sharpie time!

The stable genius has struck again! No the knuckle-dragging Trumpanzee didn't actually draw on the map to justify his idiocy again, at least not yet, but as you can see in the tweet, he did congratulate the state of Kansas when the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl last night. Never mind the fact that Kansas City is legally a city in the neighboring state of Missouri. Let's just chalk it up to more of Trump's patented Real Fake News.

Now if someone can just convince the walking bag of Cheetos that that big chunk of Antartica ice that's about to break off into the sea due to "non-existent" global warming is also a state and is home to millions of Trump fans and that he needs to go hold a rally there and get bigly ratings...

Can you imagine if the Philadelphia Eagles were in the game and won? Trumpanzee would be congratulating Mississippi, since Philadelphia, Mississippi is the only Philadelphia in the country that means anything to him.
 

For Super Sunday, one last game note and one last alternative-programming suggestion

Have you been watching The Great British Baking Show on PBS? Today Episode 5, "Pies and Tarts," airs (or aired) in most locations.

by Ken

Okay, Bob, makes sense

This afternoon about I happened, totally inadvertently, to land on NBC's pregame coverage. It was still about four hours before game time, so that would put it at about our 13 of the pregame festivities. And I paused to listen to Bob Costas talk about the possibility that in this day and age it is still possible under the rules for a Super Bowl that goes into overtime to end with the team that wins the extra-period coin flip to score and win the game without the other team touching the ball -- the game thereby being decided by the coin flip. This isn't good, Bob said, and it's hard to disagree. He proposed that the overtime rules be changed, just for the post-season, to provide for a succession of ten-minute periods, as many as are necessary for the game to end with a clear winner.

Obviously, as Bob pointed out, it's too late to do anything about Super Bowl XLIX, but there's plenty of time to fix this for Super Bowl L. Well, okay, I thought, that makes sense. And as I made my escape, I wondered if that might not be the high point of the Super Sunday festivities. That or maybe the commercials. I know a lot of people watch the game just, or mostly, for the commercials. Which would be fine except that most of the commercials suck too. You have to hand it to the NFL marketing team. Making a big annual production out of the things that your customers are paying you -- through the nose -- to show and you're forcing your viewers to watch! There are several life lessons buried in there, none of them encouraging.

In my never-ending spirit of public service, I've been trying to come up with an angle that might lend the game itself some actual football interest. Of course there's always the possibility that it might be a good game. It has happened. Not often, but it has happened. Still, nobody can control that part of it, and we don't want to leave the thing to chance.

No doubt there's some interest in the fact that Seahawks coach Pete Carroll is matched up against the team, and indeed the owner, that fired him after three decreasingly successful seasons, 1997-99, a decision that owner Bob Kraft has said was one of the hardest he'd made. Carroll's replacement was none other than -- Bill Belichick! That was Pete's last NFL job until his 2010 return with the Seahawks, following his shaky-starting but ultimately triumphant run with the USC Trojans -- triumphant, that is, if you don't count the small matter of the Reggie Bush recruiting violations, which led to the NCAA's retroactive giant smackdown, in the process undoing a good deal of what Pete did at USC. You could say that he got out of town just in time. And now here he is in Seattle as the defending Super Bowl champ.

Okay, that's something. But it doesn't pack all that much drama. I'm thinking that the gut-level connection here is the grudge match between two former NY Jets head coaches from the Jets' now-decades-long Era of Despond.

I know people complain that I spend an inordinate amount of time making fun of Washington Redskins buffoon-owner Daniel Snyder, considering that my hometown New York Jets have been showcasing managerial buffoonishness for as back as the normally burdened mind can encompass. But Jets fans are used to it by now, and really don't know any other way. More importantly, I don't see why this has to be an either-or situation -- ridiculing either the Redskins' ownership or the Jets'? Isn't it possible to ridicule both?

I've already called attention to the bizarre episode of Belichick's almost-seconds-long tenure with the J-E-T-S Jets, which remains for me one of the strangest episodes in the annals of professional sports. Here again is Wikipedia's summary:

Belichick had two different stints as Head Coach of the Jets without ever coaching a game.

In February 1997, Belichick, who had been an assistant coach under Bill Parcells with the New York Giants and New England Patriots, was named the Jets interim Head Coach while the Jets and Patriots continued to negotiate compensation to release Parcells from his contract with Patriots and allow Parcells to coach the Jets.[10] Six days later, the Patriots and Jets reached an agreement that allowed Parcells to coach the Jets and Belichick became the team's assistant head coach and defensive coordinator.[11] When Parcells stepped down as head coach in 1999, he had already arranged with team management to have Belichick succeed him. However, Belichick would be the New York Jets' head coach for only one day. When Belichick was introduced as head coach to the media—the day after his hiring was publicized—he turned it into a surprise-resignation announcement. Before taking the podium, he scrawled a resignation note on a sheet of loose leaf paper that read, in its entirety, "I resign as HC of the NYJ." He then delivered a half-hour speech explaining his resignation to the assembled press corps.[12]

Soon after this bizarre turn of events, he was introduced as the Patriots' 12th full-time head coach, succeeding the recently fired Pete Carroll. The Patriots had tried to hire him away from Parcells/the Jets in the past. Parcells and the Jets claimed that Belichick was still under contract to the Jets, and demanded compensation from the Patriots. NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue agreed, and the Patriots gave the Jets a first-round draft pick in 2000 in exchange for the right to hire Belichick.[13]

Pete's Jets career was a good deal less strange. Here's Wikipedia again:

His success [as defensive backs coach] with the Vikings led to his hiring by the New York Jets, where he served as defensive coordinator under Bruce Coslet for four seasons (1990–93). When there was an opening for the Vikings' head coach position in 1992, he was a serious candidate but lost the position, again to Green.[8]

In 1994, Carroll was elevated to head coach of the Jets. Known for energy and youthful enthusiasm, Carroll painted a basketball court in the parking lot of the team's practice facility where he and his assistant coaches regularly played three-on-three games during their spare time.[11] The Jets got off to a 6–5 start under Carroll, but in week 12, he was the victim of Dan Marino's "clock play"—a fake spike that became a Miami Dolphins game-winning touchdown. The Jets lost all of their remaining games to finish 6–10. He was fired after one season.[11][12]

Considering the levels of futility at which more recent Jets coaches have managed to hold on to their jobs, a single 6-10 season and out seems a trifle harsh. Then again, there's that late-season fold that happened again in New England, and it could be that both the Jets' and Pats' ax-wielders had it right. Clearly the Pete Carroll who built the Seahawks into the solidly competitive team they are today isn't the same coach who cut such an appealingly earnest young figure only to bomb out of his first two NFL head-coaching jobs.


NOW AS TO THAT PROGRAMMING ALTERNATIVE


At the starting gate: The 12 original Great British Baking Show contestants

I've already called attention to TBS's Law and Order Super Sunday marathon. Alternatively, depending on where you live, you may still be able to check out PBS's offering of what it's calling The Great British Baking Show, a runaway hit on British TV as The Great British Bake Off. (That name couldn't be used here because of trademark restrictions.) If I've got the schedule right, today they're at Week 5 of a 12-week run, and in some places today's episode hasn't aired as of the time this post goes up. Here in NYC, I gather WNET is airing the show Sundays at 4pm. (DVR-equipped Gothamites take note: There's a repeat airing Tuesday morning at 4am.) However, in the D.C. area, where Bonnie S. Benwick has just been extolling the show's virtues ("'The Great British Baking Show’ on PBS: Food Network, take note."), it airs on WETA at 8pm. As the prophets say, check your local listings.

I haven't seen the show myself, but it should be possible to catch up with most if not all of it online. (On the WNET website, I see, as of this moment you can watch Episodes 2-5.) Bonnie Benwick casts her piece in the form of a letter to Food Network; regular readers may recall that I have been transformed from a TVFNaholic to a Food Network hater, now that its motto has become "Sure, our programming eats toxic sludge, but you barfbrains are watching it, aren't you?" So I'm pleased to see that Bonnie has some nicely nasty things to say about Food Network. Here's what she has to say about the show:

Dear Food Network,

Loving the new baking show — on PBS. Even those of us who would rather pluck a bucketful of fresh thyme leaves than watch competitive cooking on television are, in a word, enchanted. We are eating up every episode of “The Great British Baking Show,” nee “The Great British Bake Off,” whose last-season finale drew more than 13 million U.K. viewers, a 50 percent audience share.

Want to know why? Here’s hoping you do. It’s partly about culinary education, but mostly about authenticity.

As in, contestants are allowed to be real, not presented as archetypes. Everybody’s civil, respectful, even — judges and funny hosts, too. We get the impression they’re all mates who like to share a pint at the pub. In fact, the amateur bakers did just that, each week, before the cameras began rolling.

“We don’t like editing people to look mean,” says British food writer and former BBC producer Diana Henry.

Contrast that with American reality TV. Here, said PBS chief programming executive Beth Hoppe, “we cast for LOUD” (with the exception of PBS).

Exactly.

The show tests the skills of 12 home bakers over the course of 10 weeks, as they all perform in a specially outfitted tent on the grounds of a manor house in county Berkshire; we see black lambs gamboling between action shots. Men and women, teens and sexagenarians, shire-born and immigrants are vying for the title of top baker. They have regular lives and jobs. They practice at home during the week, based on a list of broad categories provided by the show, and spend 10-hour weekend days on the set. Each episode comprises three types of “bakes,” and a star baker is crowned.

Judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry
and hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc

The competition doesn’t lack for drama. It’s writ small, though, like in a home kitchen (with the exception of Iain Watters’s BakedAlaskaGate). [Hint: You definitely want to check out the BakedAlaskaGate link. It's a pip. -- Ed.] Cakes crack, fillings ooze. Thanks to a spot-on production crew, we get to see those moments, plus the kind of second-guessing and oven anxiety we’re prone to ourselves. When contestants are chuffed, we surrender to Anglophilia. When an effort falls short, judgment is delivered with kindness and understanding.

Sometimes judges Mary Berry, something of a national culinary institution, and celebrity baker Paul Hollywood throw a spanner into the works, but the challenge is reasonable: The baking time or oven temperature might be omitted from the directions, and the bakers manage based on their experience. The lesson to be gleaned from crafting a “Chopped” main course from, say, fish heads, peanut brittle and lime gelatin seems less significant, in comparison.

Lincolnshire grandmother Nancy Birtwhistle has a homespun contraption to aerate her fennel and rye crackers. Must try that. North London builder Richard Burr’s chocolate fondants are perfectly proportioned and executed, prompting Berry to pipe up, “Now that’s what I call a sauced pudding!” Enwezor Nzegwu, a business consultant from Portsmouth, alas, is gone too soon. But there will be no clawing his way back into the competition through cutthroat capers.

And now we know from sauced puds, Victoria sponges, Swiss rolls. To U.K. viewers and expats, it’s the stuff of memory and tradition. For America, it’s a window on the world of the baked goods Brits hold dear. “When I grew up, you were supposed to be able to be good at an eggy sponge, a light cake,” says food writer Henry. “It’s in the DNA here.”

The production crew seems to capture the technique involved in every step along the way, for each baker. Those comparisons offers much insight, really, into how home bakers perform similar feats and achieve different results.

We have long looked to public television for helpful cooking instruction. (Cue “The French Chef” theme music.) “GBBO,” as the Twitter hashtaggers call it, proves that the format can offer genuine entertainment as well. Hoppe says she tried to acquire the British series a couple of years ago but was outbid by CBS, which effectively took “GBBO” off the table so it could develop and air 2013’s “The American Baking Competition.” (That judge-host combo didn’t work so well, and poor ratings canceled the show.)

When “GBBO” became available again, “it had gone bonkers in the U.K., along the magnitude of ‘Downton Abbey,’ ” Hoppe says. So she brought it to PBS and promises we’ll see the next season as well. U.S. viewership thus far stands at 2.5 million, for a network whose prime-time average is about 1 million viewers.

Yeah, Food Network, your ratings are up around that number on Sunday nights. But some of us have been turning the sound down for years.

And what does the last baker left standing on “GBBO” get? Neither prize money nor a Ford truck nor his or her own show that will wind up in a desperate time slot. The winner receives an engraved cake plate.

What fame brings ’round afterward has gotten formulaic, even in Great Britain. Media coverage of contestants’ home kitchens and cookbook deals are common; Richard Burr this week is putting the finishing touches on his collection of 78 recipes, a project that took him away from work for two months. He has 30K Twitter followers.

“Third of February, I’m fitting kitchens again,” Burr says. “But it’s been nice getting messages from a lot of men who bake. It makes me happy for fellas to go and make a mess in the kitchen.”

P.S., Food Network: Can you forward this to your buddies at Bravo?

#

Home Safety Watch: Say, it's Super Bowl weekend -- watch out for bedroom TVs toppling over onto the kiddies!

"From 2011 to 2013, an average of 11,000 children under age 18 were treated in emergency rooms for injuries involving TVs or injuries involving both televisions and furniture, according to a new report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. From 2000 to 2013, 279 people were actually killed by falling TVs and furniture."

-- from "TVs tip over on toddlers with surprising frequency,
causing injuries and deaths," on washingtonpost.com

by Ken

Super Bowl weekend means different things to different people. To me, for example, it means that maybe I should check out which episodes TBS is including in that all-day Law and Order marathon (and never mind that I've got the whole thing on DVD -- it still strikes me as a way superior option).

Apparently, to a lot of people the Super Bowl means it's time to buy a new TV or two. And the Washington Post's Lenny Bernstein makes a further connection I wasn't aware of. It seems that buying a new TV frequently means moving the old TV it's replacing into the bedroom, where with alarming frequency it may topple over onto a household kiddie. And whereas old-style CRT TVs perched atop a dresser pack humongous force when they topple over onto an unsuspecting toddler, even much lighter flat-panel sets can seriously mess up a kiddie-size body lying in its descent path.

Well, what the heck? It's only kiddies, right? Pass the nachos.

To Your Health

TVs tip over on toddlers with surprising frequency, causing injuries and deaths

By Lenny Bernstein January 30 at 2:48 PM

It's not your imagination — Americans buy nearly three times as many televisions before the Super Bowl as they do before any other sporting event (the World Series is second, the NBA Finals third), according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

It's what happens after you get that new set home that creates a largely unrecognized health hazard. The old TV often goes in a kid's room or some other part of the home, usually on a dresser or another piece of furniture that's not built to handle it. Curious kids climb the unstable TV-furniture combo and the whole thing tips over, resulting in a surprising number of injuries.

From 2011 to 2013, an average of 11,000 children under age 18 were treated in emergency rooms for injuries involving TVs or injuries involving both televisions and furniture, according to a new report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. From 2000 to 2013, 279 people were actually killed by falling TVs and furniture.

"This is just one of those things that we need to educate people about, because it's so preventable," Marietta S. Robinson, commissioner of the Consumer Product Safety agency, said in an interview.

In tests conducted by the consumer agency, a 32-inch CRT (old style) television dropped from a height of 36 inches hit with an average force of 12,703 pounds. Flat screens hit with 2,100 pounds or less, still a sizable impact on a small child's body. Forty-one percent of U.S. households still have at least one CRT set, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.



Nor is there always a loud crash to alert parents. Brett Horn of Kansas City, Mo., lost his 2 ½-year-old son, Charlie, in 2007 when a 30-inch-high dresser tipped over on the child who was supposed to be napping. Despite having an audio monitor on, Charlie's nanny heard nothing. When she went to check on Charlie and his two brothers, she found the child, who was later declared dead of asphyxiation.

"When that [dresser] tipped over and fell on him, it didn't make a sound or much of a sound, because obviously there was something there to break his fall," Horn said. He and his wife later founded Charlie's House to help spread the word about accidents to children in homes.

Lisa Siefert of Barrington, Ill. found her son, 2-year-old Shane, under his dresser after his nap. There was no television, no toys on top, but presumably he had pulled out the drawers and tried to climb to the top when the furniture tipped over on him. She also has started a child safety organization, Shane's Foundation, to reduce future deaths and injuries.

Siefert and her husband had child-proofed the house for an older sibling of Shane's. "We had outlet covers, drawer latches, netting for the balcony, play gates, door-knob covers," she said. "This is not something that we were aware of."

Robinson said the government works with furniture manufacturers to improve furniture stability, and the Consumer Electronics Association is part of a group that promotes National TV Safety Day on Saturday. The solutions are pretty simple: anchoring TVs and furniture to walls as part of childproofing a home, and recycling old, heavy CRT televisions that are rarely used.

When parents put knives out of reach and childproof cabinet doors, "they should also think about anchoring their furniture to the wall," Robinson said. "This is a danger that people just don't think of."

"We’re asking families to add one important, and perhaps overlooked, task to their pregame prep,” Kate Carr, president and chief executive of Safe Kids Worldwide, said in a news release. “Take a look around your home. Can the flat-panel TV tip over? Have you moved the old CRT to a bedroom dresser where it rarely gets watched? On National TV Safety Day, recycle that old TV. Your home will be safer for it.”

TVs and furniture can be mounted on walls or anchored with straps and brackets, all of which can be purchased at low cost wherever the sets themselves are bought, officials said. If that's impossible, TVs should be placed on low, stable piece of furniture, with the television pushed back as far as possible to the wall.

#

Today's Update from Super Bowl City: What to do if if turns out your Super Bowl tickets are fake

What, you thought you could just walk into MetLife Stadium for the Super Bowl on Sunday? You sad dreamer! If you're already in East Rutherford, NJ (and we won't ask why you're in East Rutherford, NJ), you have to make the long march to Secaucus, NJ (by the time you're making the schlepp from East Rutherford to Secaucus, you should have a strong hint that your life hasn't turned out quite the way you hoped), and then take the NJ Transit train. But you'll have to show your game ticket to board the stadium train.

"New York, New York, it's a hell of a town.
The Bronx is up, and the Battery's down."

-- Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Paper No. [inaudible]

by Ken

We continue our series of service features on Coping with Super Bowl XLVIII. Yesterday, you'll recall, we warned you that all $100 bills in the Greater NY-NJ Metropolitan Area have been replaced with counterfeits. If you're caught trying to pass fake C-notes, you'll . . . um, I have to admit that I didn't read the report all that carefully. I believe it said that if you're caught with the hot bills, the Secret Service will send you to New Haven. But I should probably check this out further.

Some locals think they can get around by carrying their walking-around money in 50s (or 1000s). However, this still requires you to place a heap of faith in purported U.S. currency, and our information is that more prudent Super Bowl attendees are carrying their spending money in rolls of nickels.

Moving on to today's "So You're Going to the Super Bowl" Tip, No. 312:

If you've got tickets for the game, they're probably fake.

Bronx Man Caught with Over $100K in Fake Super Bowl Tickets: Authorities

By Ben Fractenberg on January 30, 2014 7:55pm

THE BRONX -- A Soundview man's "dream crushing" counterfeit Super Bowl ticket operation was shut down Thursday, Bronx prosecutors said.

Police arrested Kevin Walker, 42, after finding 124 fake tickets worth $113,900 in his Croes Avenue apartment and in a van owned by his housemate, according to the Bronx District Attorney's Office. [Huh? The fake tickets were worth $113,900? To whom? -- Ed.]

“The sale of these tickets would have potentially deprived fans of their hard earned dollars and crushed the dreams of young and old expecting to attend the much anticipated annual climax to the football season," Bronx DA Robert Johnson said in a statement.

Investigators working with the National Football League saw Walker leaving his apartment Wednesday about 6:30 p.m. with a shoebox, which he placed in a van parked outside.

Bronx prosecutors did not say why they zeroed in on Walker.

Police got a warrant to enter the apartment he was sharing with a woman and found the tickets, holographic paper, gold leaf paper, laminate glue, two packages of 4-by-6 photo paper, a cutter and hot press, according to the DA's Office.

Two other men were arrested Monday for allegedly selling counterfeit tickets, parking passes and Super Bowl events around the city. . . .

If you procured your tickets from a legitimate oligarchical source (who should have shown you his "Certified 1%" license), you're probably OK. Otherwise you should head out for the long journey to MetLife Stadium in beautiful East Rutherford, NJ, with a backup plan in case your tickets turn out to be counterfeit.

Final official data on the quantity of ticket counterfeiting for Super Bowl XLVIII and its ranking among other Super Bowls won't be available until Monday at the earliest, but the NY-NJ Super Bowl XLVIII Host Committee was guardedly confident that their event will be at the very least strongly competitive. Said Host Committee spokesman Victor Schlemenko: "You have to remember, our ticket counterfeiters are selling fake tickets for a game in a freezing cold stadium in the wilds of New Jersey in the dead of winter. It's not like Hawaii or Bali or someplace."

MEANWHILE, THE GOOD NEWS IS . . .

Even if your tickets are fake, there's a good chance that you'll be able to get at least to if not actually in the stadium under the security system set up for access to the facility. As you probably know, you can't just sashay into the stadium. While limited convoys of armored Lexuses bearing 1%-ers may be allowed on the grounds, other attendees are required to take a NJ Transit train to Secaucus, where they may be able to transfer to the train to the stadium, via a system closely modeled on the German railroads' plan for transporting new arrivals to Auschwitz and the other Nazi death camps.

According to the MTA.info website:

How to get to the first outdoor, cold weather Super Bowl.

On February 2, MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey will be home to the National Football League’s Super Bowl XLVIII. If you have a ticket, the only way to reach the stadium is by public transportation, either a pre-arranged hotel shuttle bus, or NJTRANSIT train from Secaucus. No private vehicles will be allowed to approach the stadium without prior arrangement. Fortunately, public transportation options abound See our Regional Transit Diagram (PDF), which also shows the location of other Super Bowl events the week of the game. . . .

To reach the stadium on game day:
NJTRANSIT provides rail service directly to the stadium via Secaucus Junction. From the city, take any NJTRANSIT train from Penn Station one stop to Secaucus, then change to a stadium-bound shuttle train. Round-trip fare from Penn Station New York is $10.50. Only fans with Super Bowl tickets will be allowed to board the stadium-bound trains at Secaucus. Please be prepared to show your train ticket and game ticket. Travel time including the transfer is about 30 minutes. See NJTransit.com for details.

So you see, there's a good chance that your counterfeit tickets may be good enough to get you onto the stadium train. It seems likely, however, that a holding facility will be available onsite for holding phony-ticket detainees, until they can be, um . . . transferred to New Haven?

Probably you should bring a book, and maybe some chips or something to nosh on, and of course a beverage. Dress warmly.

#

Hey, sports fans, it's raining phony 100s in Super Bowl City!

Plus: "Mullah John Smith" update


No, this isn't the alert for the current wave of phony $100 bills flooding Super Bowl City. Still, I think it conveys the general spirit of the current excitement in the Big Apple.

by Ken

Here in the Big Apple some of us are in the grip of Super Bowl XLVIII Mania. Or I should probably say "here in the Greater NY-NJ Metropolitan Area," since the NJ folk are touchy about being preempted by the Big Apple, what with the game being played in their state -- in East Rutherford's MetLife Stadium, the home of the, er, New York Giants and New York Jets.

Then again, some of us aren't. In the grip of Super Bowl XLVIII Mania, I mean. For some of us it's just a pointless pain, requiring us to keep track of where we can't go until the whole thing blows over.

There's talk of an economic windfall, but I for one don't expect to see any of it. And some contrarian types have been pointing out that any economic activity flying into the area is likely to be more than offset by the economic activity being driven out by the plague festivities.

While much of the talk of the town these days concerns whether and when the temperature will peek above the freezing mark. (The weather folk are optimistic for Super Sunday, but not by much and not much before.) Now it appears that there's evidence of one unquestioned economic inflow into Super Bowl City: of fake money.

(Of course, for some of us, daily routines aren't impinged on in any way by any degree of panic about the legitimacy of those 100s. The closest I've gotten to one in living memory is the image at the top of this post.)

Millions of Dollars in Phony $100 Bills Flooding the Big Apple

By Murray Weiss on January 30, 2014

NEW YORK CITY -- It’s all about the Benjamins.

An international counterfeiting ring has been pumping millions of dollars in phony $100 bills into New York and other cities in the metropolitan area over the past several years, forcing the Secret Service to step up its operation to shut it down, sources told "On The Inside."

Federal officials are tracking the mules who smuggle bogus bills into the country and distributing an alert to New York businesses, banks and security industry personnel that teaches how to detect the fake C-notes, a copy of which DNAinfo New York obtained.

The counterfeit cash appears to have been manufactured on offset printing machines using plates and ink, rather than on more sophisticated copiers, according to Michael Seremetis, the assistant special agent in charge of the New York Secret Service office.

The loot is produced in bulk and bundled into packages that are smuggled in luggage or carried on planes by couriers who get about 40 cents on the dollar to put the fakes into circulation.

"The network is similar to that of the narcotics trade," Seremetis explained. "It is distributed via a sophisticated network that involves several mules who do the passing of the notes here in the tri-state area."

The Secret Service warning says the bills contain a set of five different serial numbers and have two black 7s above the last zero on the lower right-hand corner, above the "100" mark on the back of the bill.

Although the Super Bowl game is taking place in the New York City area, officials are downplaying any connection between those festivities and the timing of their warning -- and insist counterfeiters are not using the big game as a convenient time to pass off their funny money.

The counterfeit cash frequently turns up in clubs, bars and casinos, officials said. Department stores over holiday periods are typical targets.

If you have a phony $100 that is confiscated, you will lose the value of the money but can declare a tax loss at the end of the year, officials said.

"We are asking the public to let us know if they encounter these bills," Seremetis said.

Officials asked anyone with information to call the Secret Service's New Haven office at (203) 865-2449, or the NYPD at 1-800-577-TIPS.  All calls will be kept confidential.

UPDATE: MY NEW FAVORITE FICTIONAL CHARACTER



In my post yesterday ("Confidential to Dilbert's CEO: If anybody makes a fuss about your drones-to-terrorists deal, just say, 'Who could have known?'") I suggested some possible emotional supports for those in the throes of varying stages of existential anxiety: a dose of Dilbert for those in merely up to their ankles; the latest Chris Hedges announcement-of-doom post ("The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies") for those in up to their necks or higher. With matters of such high urgency at issue, I fear that I gave unacceptably short shrift to a character who made an appearance -- or at any rate scored an allusion -- in one of the Dilbert strips. I'd like to rectify that now.

DILBERT -- Tuesday (click to enlarge)

#

The Giants are in the Super Bowl, and I don't give a damn -- who'd-a thunk it? (Is it finally time to attack those DVR-stored "Portlandia" episodes?)

Anything that causes "my" hometown Giants' head coach, Tom Coughlin, agita is OK in my book. It's hard not to have some grudging professional respect for Patriots coach Bill Belichek, who has successfully invented and reinvented the team a bunch of times in his tenure, but he's pretty much a prick too.

by Ken

Maybe it's a function of getting old, though from what I observe, old folks make up one of the more rabidly gung-ho-er elements of the NFL fan base, or maybe it's a matter of my having absorbed the lesson that "my" sports teams aren't in any sense "mine," but are the playthings of super-rich elite types and corporations who think I should be grateful for the privilege of serving them as a customer base. But where the prospect of a Giants Super Bowl appearance would once have had me strung out with excitement and expectation -- the first two certainly did -- this one doesn't mean anything to me. I paid hardly any attention this season, except to enjoy the discomfiture of that dreadful scumbag coach Tom Coughlin when the Giants were suffering one of their now-standard spells of sub-crap playing. Anything that gives Tom Coughlin agita is A-OK in my book.

I might add that, with respect to my hypothesized reasons for loss of interest, the second one interests me, because I've noticed how drastically my interest is waned in the sport I once really cared about, baseball. I think maybe I've never recovered from the season in which I paid my first (and now, in all likelihood, last) visits to the then-new "New" Yankee Stadium and Citi Field (new home of the New York Mets). Even before I managed to set foot in either joint, the message came through loud and clear that these palaces weren't built for the likes of me -- they were built to separate suckers from their dough, with certain obligatory allowances made for the necessary nuisance of having baseball games played on the premises.

Probably there are other Americans used to not giving a damn about the Super Bowl, but I wasn't prepared for how alienating an experience it is, while so much of the rest of the country is building to such a fevered pitch. Meanwhile I haven't even been able to enjoy what I used think was the most entertaining media week of the year: that second week before the Big Game, when there's only one game left to be played in the season and by then everything that can be said about it has already been said about 16 million times, and the reporters are reduced to interviewing one another. Oh wait, I'm forgetting one thing: Tthere's always the day's update to the teams' injury reports.

Lost in my grumpiness, I was temporarily buoyed by a piece circulated by Nation of Change: "Four Reasons to Watch the Super Bowl: Joe Hill, Joe Pa, Tebow, Wee Brains," by Robert Lipsyte, whom I know to be a serious person with a serious background in writing about sports. I'm going to have to say, though, that Bob's reasons didn't help me.

Most Americans won’t need a justification to watch Sunday’s game, but if you’re a TomDispatch.com reader you might think, even in passing, that celebrating the holiest day of violence, consumerism, and class warfare on your couch is a betrayal of your values or a waste of your time. You might even imagine that it would be better to take a hike, read a book, or meditate.

Not this Sunday, buster. It’s an election season. You need to watch this game to fully understand how jobs, religion, leadership, and healthcare dominate every American contest.

I'm already dubious, but let's take them point by point.

1. Joe Hill will be playing

Where else will be you be able to watch more than 100 young men, most of them African-American, working for high wages in a totally unionized shop? True, their jobs are dangerous (more on that later) and relatively short-term (typically three or four years), but they are also high profile. They can lead to TV gigs, even political office. . . .

Even with a progressive attitude, watching the Super Bowl, which seems to float on rivers of oil --- think car ads -- and beer, is not exactly like holding a OWS-style general assembly in the red zone. Nevertheless, it’s a terrific visual of the American class divide. In their skyboxes, usually in jacket and tie, eating, drinking, and high-fiving -- or scowling -- are the one-percenters who own the team, which is usually not their only source of income.

Below them, on the field, are their employees (many of them temporary one-percenters, given the median league salary of at least $560,000), using up the capital of their bodies. If you want to root for the Patriots or the Giants, fine. I’ll be rooting for the working class.

Huh? How do you do that, root for the working class? However the game unfolds, the working class wins up to a point, but (a) the upper echelons of the players (Tom Brady, say) aren't working class by any stretch, and (b) as you've already pointed out, the game belongs to the one-percenters. How do you manage to not root for them? (Perhaps by not watching the damned game?)

2. Tim Tebow will not be playing

Thank God. The season’s most hyped player -- the NFL published its first magazine last month with Tebow on the cover -- has the looks, personality, and backstory of the clean-living, principled, athletic role model we’ve been told we need to help raise our children. . . .

This past season, as a Denver Bronco rookie quarterback, Tebow carried his team to the division playoffs despite his shortcomings as a passer and field tactician. As the saying goes, all he could do was win. . . . While his aggressive evangelism turned off some people, no one could deny his confidence and fierce competitiveness on the field, and his humility and niceness off it. . . . Tebow is too true to be good. His religious principles may eventually even get in the way of money-making. . . .

If he were playing Sunday, it undoubtedly wouldn’t be the Super Bowl, but the Tebowl.

Granted, but as you say, he's not playing tomorrow. And while the guy kind of annoys me, I don't care about him.

3. JoePa will be there

Once held up as the gold standard of college football coaching, now as the hero of a classical tragedy, the late Joe Paterno will be represented on Sunday by three players and his successor as head coach at Penn State. They will be reminders of what Paterno really represented beneath the iconic image. . . .

Yeah, but one thing you don't mention in connection with "what Paterno really represented" is what's always claimed to have been his great stress on his players' academic performance. Was that maybe not so? Perhaps that's worth saying.

4. You can occupy the Super Bowl

One of the Penn State trustees who voted to fire Paterno, Kenneth C. Frazier, said this: “[E]very adult has a responsibility for every other child in our community. We have a responsibility for ensuring that we can take every effort that’s within our power not only to prevent further harm to that child but to every other child.” . . .

This metamorphoses into a discussion of the heightened concern about the physical punishment absorbed by football players.

[I]f you believe in taking responsibility for “every other kid,” go organize in your community against helmet-wearing tackle football -- at the very least until high-school age. (If you let your own kid play peewee football, you should be charged with child abuse.) It’s hard to go up against Jock Culture, which you’ll be watching in its full power and glory on Sunday. Then again, it’s hard to go up against the banks and the war machine, too. It’s time, in other words, to occupy football.

Yeah, I guess, but again, I don't see how that's a reason for me to watch the game. And no, I don't want to hear a word, not a single effing word, about this year's Super Bowl telecast commercials, or about the too-long pregame yawnorama, or any wardrobe malfunctions or any other damn make-believe event that may happen.


BY COMPARISON, AN EVENING'S WORTH OF PORTLANDIA
EPISODES THAT'VE BEEN STACKING UP ON MY DVR . . .

. . . may be Thrill City. Maybe I just haven't found the right attention wavelength, but after entirely missing the first season of this much-heralded show, I found the first couple of episodes of the second season all but unbearably tedious. It's not that I hold much of a brief for the people who are New Age artsy-type people being made fun of, but can anyone figure out from the show why they're being made fun of? No, wait, "fun" isn't the right word -- if I could detect any fun happening, I would probably already have watched those piling-up unwatched episodes.

Portlandia creators-stars Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein portay two among their tediously infinite number of, er, zany characters, and you just know that with hilarious characters like these, this scene has to be a laff riot.

(And what's the deal with that show with that show with David Cross, who's usually at least somewhat interesting, which IFC is show afterwards? Is there supposed to be something amusing about that? I've got episodes of that piling up too, and find it hard to imagine ever watching another.)

#

"The worst Super Bowl party ever": Should the White House switch its policy-making apparatus to Dave's Law?

by Ken

I watched about 10 minutes of the Super Bowl (about when the Saints came back from their 10-0 deficit to take the lead), and it mostly served to remind me why I took this season off from football. (It's gonna be a tough call when training camps open in the summer to see whether I can get it up for the Giants' uphill battle to match this season's 8-8 record.) Later I had to make a trip to the supermarket before it closed, and they had the radio feed on, but that was easy enough to ignore.

I bring this up only to explain how it happened that I didn't see the Letterman spot. I've caught up to it, and I think it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I just keep hitting that YouTube "Replay" button.

Tom Shales has the story behind the story in his WaPo column today:

The spot, which aired in the second quarter, opened with Letterman sitting on a couch, eating chips and watching TV. The camera pulled back to reveal two companions watching with Dave: Oprah Winfrey, who appeared in a similar spot in 2007, and the totally unexpected Jay Leno, Letterman's rival since Leno snatched NBC's "Tonight Show" out from under him in 1992.

"This is the worst Super Bowl party ever," Letterman says. "You're just saying that because I'm here," Leno counters. Viewers had to be wondering if their eyes deceived them -- why would Leno and Letterman be appearing together? -- and if the whole thing was some diabolical computer-generated trick.

Letterman himself dreamed up the spot and wrote it, according to Rob Burnett, president of Letterman's Worldwide Pants production company. "Dave is ruled by one law," Burnett said from the Super Bowl. "Is it funny? And if it's funny, let's do it." The notion of having an NBC star on CBS air was cleared by CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves, executives at NBC, and Leno, who when contacted by Dave's people, agreed immediately, reportedly telling a Letterman staffer, "This is what show business should be."

The spot was taped Tuesday night in the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway, where Letterman's show is performed. Winfrey was smuggled in unnoticed and Leno arrived in a disguise that included dark glasses and a fake mustache. "We were desperate to keep this a secret," Burnett said. "All three of them were professional, friendly and cordial for the 28 minutes or so that it took to do the spot."

"Everybody wins in this," Burnett said -- partly because all three performers, especially Leno and Letterman, who've been sniping at each other in recent monologues on their shows -- come off looking like good sports.

I wonder whether the Obama White House would benefit from adopting Dave's Law ("Is it funny?") for its policy- and decision-making process. I know this isn't an approach you'd want to see taught in civics classes, but it could hardly produce much worse results than whatever the hell process it is Master Rahm is using now.

SPEAKING OF THE OBAMA WHITE HOUSE

Have you heard about Financial Times reporter Edward Luce's piece, "A fearsome foursome"? (There may be a link somewhere that will take you directly to the piece, but if you've already used up your one free hit per month, this one requires that you be registered on ft.com. It doesn't cost anything to register, though, and that bumps you up to 10 free articles per month.)

Luce set out to discover "what went wrong?" in year one of the Obama adminstration that left the president at the helm of "a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington's ways"

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons - from Mr Obama's decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president's inability to convince voters he can "feel their [economic] pain", to the apparent ungovernability of today's Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis - and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington - most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office - each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people - Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

As a colleague points out, this tight loop doesn't account for the White House economic axis of Larry Summers and Timmy Geithner. You get the feeling that they don't have to worry about having their input filtered through Master Rahm. Nevertheless, for those of us who have been wondering how the administration got so seriously off course. Digby has already been here, and Howie will have more to say about the Luce piece, with particular reference to Master Rahm, in the morning.

#

The Big Scary Gay Video CBS Was Afraid To Show You Today

I hope you enjoyed that! Now have a great Super Bowl but, first, consider a proposition. One of the Senate's most vicious homophobes, South Carolina reactionary Jim DeMint, is tweeting away his devotion to the Colts. A few days ago Ken explained why the whole DWT crew is rooting for New Orleans. How about every time the Saints score a touch down you give one dollar to Jennifer Brunner, a progressive Democrat who supports marriage equality and will balance out every crappy, bigoted vote DeMint ever takes if she gets into the Senate? You can do it here.

The Saints' Scott Fujita must drive the reactionary NFL establishment just plain bonkers

"People say, 'That's so courageous of you.' To me, it's not that courageous to have an opinion, especially if you wholeheartedly think it's the right thing. For me, standing up for equal rights is the right thing to do."

-- "bad-ass linebacker" Scott Fujita of the New Orleans Saints

by Ken

Here I was, all set to revisit, for the umpteenth time, how our "experts" -- on foreign affairs, on the economy, on health care, on you-name-it -- are chosen for both official and general media use. (Hint: It has nothing to do with competence, and not much more to do with having ever been right about anything.)

You might think we've done that old subject to death, and yet it's astonishing how little effect it has. Here we are, after all, taking advice about dealing with Afghanistan and Iran from people who were 0-for-everything-they-said-or-wrote about Iraq, or turning to the people who crashed the economy, and their sideline cheerleaders, to figure out how to extricate ourselves from the fine mess they got us into. It defies logic, reason, sense. Or does it?

Believe me, I dread writing about this (again) as much as you dread reading about it (again). But do we have a choice?

For today, we have. Our friend Jimmy the Saint has passed along a story I would probably have missed, since as I believe I mentioned I've taken a sabbatical from professional football this year. It's a story that embodies hope and change you can believe in, though if you're like me, the farther you read in this piece by the Boston Globe's Adam Kilgore, the harder you may find it to believe -- coming as this does from a guy acknowledged as a "bad-ass linebacker."

In this story you're also going to meet an interesting sportswriter named Dave Zirin, who set himself the seemingly arduous task of finding a professional athlete who would lend public support to the Washington, D.C. National Equality March in support of LGBT rights. As Adam Kilgore writes:

Before reaching out to Fujita, Zirin had e-mailed several dozen professional athletes asking them to endorse the march. Each one, even players Zirin knew supported it, declined to publicly stand behind it. "They didn't want to go near this," Zirin said. "It was too third-rail."

In his support of gay rights, Zirin wanted to tap into the sports world, which he said is often regarded as "the last hamlet of homophobia."

Zirin believed that dissolving that stereotype could empower the campaign.

"The last hamlet of homophobia" indeed! Unless I've missed something, and I don't think I have, we still haven't had an American male in a major team sport come out while he was still playing. A lot of people have speculated on the impact it will have when we have our first gay star quarterback, or linebacker, or slugger, or pitcher, or NBA scoring champ. The reality is that quite likely we've already had all of these; what we haven't had is any declared-gay ones, or even declared-gay teammates of the above. And of course the reason is that "last hamlet of homophobia" that is the sports world. If you were a gay professional athlete, and had spent as much time in locker rooms as you would have to have, you would think long and hard before you would want to face a locker room after coming out.

Let's be clear, Scott Fujita isn't gay. But in some ways that makes this story more remarkable. Scott reached out for trouble, as opposed to just coming to grips with the trouble forced on him by the primitive attitudes of a segment of American society.

As Kilgore tells us, Scott's adoptive father, Rodney Fujita, was born in 1943 in a Japanese-American internment camp while Nagao Fujita, Scott's grandfather, was fighting in Italy with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Scott's paternal grandmother, Lillie, is still alive, and as you'll see, they've talked about her wartime experience. (You may be surprised by what he learned from her.)

I really couldn't find anything in the Kilgore report that I was willing to omit, so here's the whole thing. Pay as little attention as you can to my boldfacing. Think of it as mere graffiti, or maybe the kind of mindless "highlighting" you see people inflict on helpless books with their marking pens -- in public!

Solid backing by Saint

Fujita unafraid to support gay rights

By Adam Kilgore, Globe Staff | February 3, 2010

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- When the request arrived in an e-mail last fall, Scott Fujita replied immediately and without reservation. A friend had asked him his opinion. He answered. That was how Fujita looked at it.

The swiftness and certitude of Fujita's reply stunned Dave Zirin, the friend who sent the e-mail. Zirin had not made a typical request, not for an NFL linebacker. He was looking for a professional athlete to lend his name to the National Equality March, a rally in Washington for gay rights.

On Sunday, Fujita will reach the pinnacle of his football career, playing linebacker for the New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl. Fujita describes it as "this small moment in time where you have a platform to do some good things." Last fall, that included speaking out in support of gay rights, a rare step in a professional sporting culture that often turns social stances into landmines.

Fujita, who is married, the father of twin daughters, and straight, pushes against the rising trend in sports to remain mum on cultural and political touchstones. His boldness, shaped by his unusual upbringing, makes him an uncommon and effective advocate for what he believes in.

"People asked me a question and I gave my opinion," Fujita said. "People say, ‘That's so courageous of you.' To me, it's not that courageous to have an opinion, especially if you wholeheartedly think it's the right thing. For me, standing up for equal rights is the right thing to do."

Fujita's show of support for gay rights began in the fall with Zirin, a Sirius radio show host, sports correspondent for The Nation magazine, and author of edgeofsports.com, a website dedicated to the intersection of sports and politics.

Before reaching out to Fujita, Zirin had e-mailed several dozen professional athletes asking them to endorse the march. Each one, even players Zirin knew supported it, declined to publicly stand behind it. "They didn't want to go near this," Zirin said. "It was too third-rail."

In his support of gay rights, Zirin wanted to tap into the sports world, which he said is often regarded as "the last hamlet of homophobia."

Zirin believed that dissolving that stereotype could empower the campaign.

Zirin had befriended Fujita while working with him on a column, and Fujita struck him as a man unafraid to speak his mind. He hoped Fujita would help but assumed he at least would waffle. But there was the e-mailed response: "Absolutely."

Now Zirin worried. Didn't Fujita want to at least discuss the implications of an endorsement? Fujita told Zirin they could talk if he wanted, but nothing would change his mind.

"The only pressure that Scott feels," Zirin said, "is the pressure to be true to his conscience."

Fujita was adopted by a third-generation Japanese-American man named Rodney and a Caucasian woman named Helen. He feels he owes his life to them. In some states, there have been laws proposed that would allow only married couples to adopt. This deeply bothered Fujita; he interpreted the proposals as an attempt to block foster children from being adopted into loving homes.

"To me, the right to marry is a right that all men should have," Fujita said. "To me, it's more a human issue than just a gay/straight/political issue."

On Oct. 6, Fujita outlined his position in an interview by Zirin posted on the Huffington Post. The piece pinballed around the Internet days before an estimated 200,000 people attended the National Equality March.

Zirin believed Fujita's public stance -- along with a column posted in April on the Huffington Post by Ravens linebacker Brandon Ayanbadejo championing gay marriage -- reached a swath of Americans who otherwise may have been unmoved.

"It's important any time we have the ability to break free from stereotypes," Zirin said. "You have to get your head around the idea that Scott is a bad-ass linebacker for the New Orleans Saints and that he speaks his mind in support of gay rights."

Football locker rooms are not generally considered hotbeds of progressive thought. But Fujita said players are "more tolerant than they get credit for. It's not a big issue."

The absence of conflict owes partly to Fujita's personality. He is one of the most respected leaders and well-liked people on the Saints.

"He's flexible enough and he's a good guy," linebacker Scott Shanle said. "We all like when he brings out his opinions. Debates get started. You end up with two or three people in an argument, then you've got 10 to 20 people that are in an argument. It's good just to get everyone together."

In 2006, Fujita left the Dallas Cowboys to play for the Saints. People asked him why. The Cowboys were a marquee NFL franchise. Devastation had engulfed New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Fujita chose New Orleans because he told himself, "This could be bigger than football." Fujita wanted to help the ravaged city. He devotes time to adoption, breast cancer awareness (his mother is a two-time survivor), wetlands restoration, and other causes. This season, the Saints nominated him as their Walter Payton Man of the Year.

In 2007, Fujita started working with Covenant House, a shelter for homeless children aged 16 to 21 that also provides health clinics and various other services. Once every couple weeks, he drops off clothes and toys his 2-year-old daughters have outgrown. He visits with children and signs autographs in the cafeteria. Several of those kids have been failed by the foster care system.

"That is partly why Scott has taken us under his wing," said Renee Blance, director of development at Covenant House. "I think he knows he could have been in their position if he had not been adopted by such a great family."

Fujita was born in 1979 to a teenaged mother who decided she did not have the means or the will to raise a son. She put him up for adoption, and Rodney and Helen Fujita adopted him when he was 6 months old. They ate rice with chopsticks and celebrated Japanese holidays. Fujita, who is white, embraced Japanese culture. From childhood, he considered himself Japanese.

"I have no Japanese blood in my body," he said. "I have a Japanese heart."

In 1943, Nagao Fujita was fighting in Italy with the 442d Regimental Combat Team while his wife Lillie was living in an internment camp. While Nagao fought in World War II, Lillie gave birth to Rodney Fujita in the Arizona desert.

As he grew older, Scott Fujita asked his grandmother about her experience. Nagao died long ago, but Lillie is still alive, and Scott still speaks with her.

"I didn't hear any sense of resentment at all in her voice," Fujita said. "I never have. To be able to not just deal with it, but to become better from it, I always say, ‘What do I have to complain about?' "

Fujita received a degree at Cal-Berkeley in political science and later earned a master's in education. When he is done playing football, he plans on maintaining his platform. He wants to become a public school teacher, and he will still be a man who gives his opinion when he is asked.

"I know there's a certain stigma that comes from being from Berkeley," Fujita said. "And I'm proud of that stigma, to tell you the truth. I never claim to have all of the answers. I don't know someone who does have all the answers. I just have opinions."

Suddenly I have a rooting interest Sunday. Go, Saints!

#