and a season of wretched excess

Beer, Benjamin Franklin supposedly said but almost certainly didn’t, is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Without cannonballing into deep theological waters, perhaps Deflategate proves the same thing.This scrumptious NFL pratfall think of someone insufferably self important stepping on a banana peel; hello, Donald Trump has come to lighten the mood of America’s annual Wretched Excess Season. It michael kors handbags consists of the days michael kors outlet this year, 12 of them between the State of the Union address and the final merciful tick michael kors outlet of the clock of the Super Bowl.The State of the Union has become, under presidents cheap Michael Kors handbags of both parties, a political pep rally degrading to everyone. The judiciary and uniformed military should never attend. And Congress, by hosting a spectacle so monarchical in structure (which is why Thomas Jefferson sent his thoughts to Congress in writing) deepens the diminishment of the legislative branch as a mostly reactive servant of an overbearing executive.Catching the State of the cheap michael kors Union’s rising wave of choreographed spontaneity and synthetic cheap Michael Kors outlet earnestness, the nation cheap Michael Kors handbags then surfs into the long run up to the Super Bowl. This storm before the storm delivers hurricane force gusts of anticipatory analysis forecasting the minute nuances of enormous people throwing their weight around. The chatter culminates in 60 minutes of actual football men risking concussions and other crippling injuries for our cheap michael kors amusement. And for selling beer (see above) and other stuff.Game Day XLIX (Roman cheap Michael Kors handbags numerals are attached to Super Bowls as to popes, but with less reason than for the bishop of Rome) will be swaddled in many pre game hours of advertising leavened by eruptions of patriotic kitsch. So, herewith a suggested pre game reading: Ben Fountain’s Iraq War novel « Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. » It is set not at a Super Bowl but at a Thanksgiving Day NFL game in Dallas, so the difference is of degree, and not much of that.When the New England Patriots won a Super Bowl berth by defeating the Indianapolis Colts 45 7, 11 footballs in the Patriots’ custody, and for the team’s use on offense, were filled with less air than NFL rules require, making them easier to pass and catch. Perhaps the 11 balls spontaneously lost exactly the same amount of air in the 2 hours or so between when the officials checked them and kickoff. Religions have been founded on less startling occurrences, but judge not lest ye be judged to be judgmental.The Patriots’ head coach, Bill Belichick, a detail obsessed martinet of Prussian severity but without even a Junker’s flair for jollity, says he is stumped. Perhaps a rogue equipment manager decided on his own cheap Michael Kors handbags to put deflated balls into the famously and exquisitely sensitive hands of the Patriots’ $27 million quarterback, Tom Brady, who never noticed. There has not been such an unmysterious mystery since an 18 and a half minute gap occurred in President Nixon’s White House tapes of a conversation between Nixon and his chief of staff in the Oval Office three days after the Watergate break in.Articles Connexes：