The Zeitgeist with Howard Barbanel

Football as a Metaphor for Americanism and the Giants as the “Home Team” for Red State Republicans

(This appeared on February 3rd in The Huffington Post) 

Two weeks ago more than 50 million Americans watched the New York Football Giants (what’s with the “Football” part of their name anyway? There hasn’t been a “Giants” baseball team in New York for more than 50 years now) defeat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Playoff Game to decide who will face the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl on Sunday. This was the largest audience for an NFL playoff game since the 1994-1995 season. The ratings were all the more remarkable given that 16-18 years ago there were far fewer media options, nary an internet and recording a show on your VCR was a monumental pain.

Some ascribe football’s recent huge ratings to its escapist nature, the vicarious violence acting as a salve to the frustrations of an American public over the seemingly never-ending recession and the beer consumed concurrently with the games as a balm to soothe Americans’ anxieties. For three hours or more we Americans get to virtually crush something or somebody whereas in real life many of us feel pretty powerless and besieged. We get to be a part of something bigger than ourselves and garner some reflected glory the next day at the gym or water cooler if our team wins. The vicarious release of repressed frustration is also why violent video games are posting gigantic sales numbers as well. Will the NFL do as well if the economy turns around, I wonder?

Others credit the proliferation of “Wild Card” teams in the playoffs of both football and baseball for ramping-up the popularity of both sports on TV and at the stadiums – professional sports have been termed the “ultimate reality programming,” because you never know what’s going to happen. Wild Cards add uncertainty and unpredictability to be sure, but they also add a measure of unfairness. Take a look at the 15-1 Green Bay Packers and their quarterback Aaron Rodgers, arguably one of the top three QBs in the game today – they do an astonishing job all season with the best record in the NFL and then lose in their first post-season outing to the Giants who had a paltry 9-7 record and only got into the post-season because everyone else in the NFC East did worse. New Yorkers are understandably elated that the Giants managed to win their last five games, including their last three playoff games on the road, but if you lived is Wisconsin, you might be crying “foul.” The same goes for the New Orleans Saints with a 13-3 record and their outstanding quarterback Drew Brees who will also be watching the big game from their couches Sunday evening.

It has come to a point where winning your division, whether in football or baseball isn’t a guarantee of anything – the late bloomers can come and take a whole season’s worth of outstanding play away. So while there is a ragingly unpredictable entertainment value to the Wild Card, the issue of “fairness and equity” (to paraphrase President Obama) may be sorely lacking. New Yorkers are happy the Giants have been dealt a winning hand and all New Yorkers wish them victory over the hated New England Patriots on Sunday but if a New York team were 15-1 or 13-3 and sitting out the big game, I’m sure most of us would not be pleased.

Therein lies the current American conundrum -- it is fair to say that the Giants are the “free market capitalists” of the NFC and the post season is a form of unfettered capitalism that makes football a red-meat metaphor for the American way of life – the Giants as Wall Street corporate raiders or venture capitalists, swooping in on that big deal at the last moment with the inherent unfairness of unbridled capitalism manifest in putting the best product on the market, even if you’re a late entry and irrespective of how long some other team has been slogging away at it. Tell it to Eastman Kodak or Polaroid after digital photography stole their thunder.

The Giants and the NFC also represent conservative, established interests. Most teams in the NFC are old time original professional football teams – kind of like mid 20^th Century blue chip stocks. Teams like the aforementioned Packers and Saints, teams such as the Lions and Eagles and Bears (oh my!). There are even Cardinals, Rams and Cowboys.     There is a Wall Street-Super Bowl index that posits that when NFC teams win the big game, the stock market goes up and when AFC teams win, the market goes down. In this contest Tom Brady and the Patriots represent liberal “Taxachusets” and the Hollywood/Media Elite and the Giants are representing Chris Christie’s New Jersey.

The Giants will be the default “home team” for Red State Republicans and Joe Sixpacks from coast to coast. Brady is a jet-setter married to A-list super model Gisele Bundchen and they live in a $20 million L.A. mansion. The Giants’ Eli Manning is a shy, self-effacing family man living in suburban New Jersey whose biggest celebrity moments are doing Toyota Camry commercials. The Giants are come from behind underdogs while the Pats come with an air of arrogance and entitlement. Sunday’s game will be a clash of the two Americas, a precursor to the big contest in November for the future of the country.

Brushes with Spring

(This appeared in the February 3rd issue of The South Shore Standard)

This week we were treated to some teasingly warm weather, especially on Wednesday when the mercury edged up towards the low 60s. For a day or two at least the heavy coats were put back in the closet in favor of the kind of lighter jackets we typically wear in October and November. Teenagers (who feel both immortal and immune to any potential malady) were running around town in their shirtsleeves.

Winter 2011-2012 so far has been one of the warmest on record, which is a welcome respite to the Siberian/Antarctic snow-buried deep freeze that was last winter. Some environmentalists wring their hands over the prospect of global warming, but from where we’re sitting this season, the world is still not warm enough. In fact we’re happy to take an official editorial position in favor of global warming if it results in many more winters such as this one in the years ahead. Just think of all the unsold fuel oil the Arabs and Venezuelans would have to sit on were that the case! Think of all the rock salt that wouldn’t have to be excavated from the earth to melt ice on the roads. Think of all the potholes that wouldn’t have to be filled (and the wheel alignments avoided by local motorists) and streets that wouldn’t need to be plowed incurring all kinds of overtime expenses – oh, and fewer service delays on the LIRR!

We are exactly 45 days from the first day of spring which this year falls out on Tuesday, March 20^th at 1:14 a.m. You can’t help but notice that the days are getting longer, which brightens everyone’s spirits. Because we’ve had so few days below freezing this winter, it is possible we’ll see some early blooming of spring flowers as the ground wasn’t permafrosted and doesn’t need to thaw out. Spring is called the “Vernal Equinox,” and according to The Old Farmers Almanac “the word equinox is derived from the Latin words meaning “equal night.” The spring and fall equinoxes are the only dates with equal daylight and dark as the Sun crosses the celestial equator. The tilt of Earth is zero (relative to Earth). With no tilt, the North/South Poles are basically straight up and down.”

An early auger of spring is the return of daylight savings time which this year comes out on Sunday, March 11^th at 2:00 a.m. which is a mere 36 days away. This also coincides with the second week of spring training for Major League Baseball, whose return also is a welcome indicator that Old Man Winter is packing his bags and not a moment too soon.

It’s Not My House, It’s You…

(This appeared in the January 27th issue of The South Shore Standard)

Last week I wrote about putting my home up for sale owing in part to the profusion of objections of a karmic nature emanating from various women I’ve been dating in the past 15 months or so of my newfound single hood. If you didn’t read last week’s column, what’s transpired is that these ladies have told me, completely unsolicited on my part (as I’d not asked anyone to move in with me or to get married) that they felt the house had “bad luck” in their minds because of the prior marriage that resided there and that they didn’t want to live in such a hexed abode (to be fair, some of the ladies also had objections to our wonderful neighborhood as well) notwithstanding my willingness to completely redecorate within and without. (You can read last week’s column at http://standardli.com/category/opinion/barbanel/).

The column set off a flurry of comments from friends and neighbors, most of whom were either aghast or appalled or incredulous or all of the above that women such as this actually, in fact, really exist and that if the median age of said women is around 40 (it is) then this explains much as to why they’re still single on the precipice of middle age and the looming expirations of their biological clocks. Many female (married) friends of mine were adamant in telling me that “these are the wrong girls for you” and that “if they aren’t interested in your feelings about the house” and “not willing to upgrade their places of habitation from small apartments” then these women ought to be dropped off by the wayside in favor of other women who would want to make me happy and who also would like to live in a nice place. Some of these friends are on second marriages and related how one or another new spouse moved into an existing house and everything worked out fine.

Other friends and neighbors were upset at the prospect of my possibly leaving the area (I’m not planning to…). Here is what one neighbor emailed me early this week:

“I do not agree with these women’s views.  I moved in with my current wife to her home, which she bought with her ex and they raised two children for a few years before getting divorced. We stayed there until the neighborhood began changing, and not for any other reason.  (The Karma is with the individuals and not the house) You know where we now live and have moved here the same month you did in 2001.  All total, 15 years we have been together and love the neighborhood.  I would not change it for the world.

My conclusion is the women were not for you to begin with.  If they really got to know you the way they should, they would have jumped all over you and moved in lock, stock and barrel.  The right person will come along.  Patience is a virtue.  Our block needs you.”

This profusion of both encouragement and wisdom made me sit back and reevaluate a whole lot of things – I’ve come to the conclusion that my friends are right not only about the house but also probably about the women I’ve been seeing.

The other evening I found myself in Brooklyn’s tony Park Slope neighborhood where small one bedroom apartments can go for well north of a half million bucks and whole townhouses are in the seven-figure stratosphere. Now, these townhouses, often with nary a view and cheek to jowl with one another (in fact jammed up against each other) are narrower, shorter and have a whole lot less air and light and land than my moderately-sized domicile here in The Five Towns. (Let’s not get started on bathrooms). In a “eureka” or epiphany moment (like Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus) while perambulating Park Slope, it dawned on me why the suburbs were such an allure and attraction to our parents and grandparents generation – duh! – it’s about the quality of life! Like the opening theme to “Green Acres:” “Land spreadin’ out far and wide, keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside…”

In the chic precincts of Manhattan and Brooklyn (Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg) people delude themselves that putting up with crime and grime, offensive subways, claustrophobic accommodations, expensive food of every variety, even higher taxes, lack of community and sickly gray pallors is worth paying five to 10 times more to live owing to the “proximity of culture” and “sophisticated” restaurants and nightlife – and – more to the point – to appear hip, cool and with-it even if you’re pushing past the big 4-0 and the youth culture cueing up behind you will soon relegate you to the outer fringes of frisson, because self-image is everything and why be a “country bumpkin” in your mind when you can lord your cosmopolitan suaveness over the rest of America by dint of your zip code and access to trucked-in locavore meats and vegetables and easy access to Zagat’s new restaurant of the week? Why admit that you’re not 25 anymore by “copping out” and living in the ‘burbs?

So, here I am still in The Five Towns and I thank my friends and neighbors for dousing my face with that bracing glass of cold water which made me realize that “it’s not my house, it’s you” and that no end of air, light, space, view and bathrooms just 21 miles from Midtown for a fraction of the cost of those “trendy” urban wards is a good deal indeed. (Oh, and I’m also a pretty good catch given my good values, pleasant demeanor, a full head of hair at 53, slim waistline and lack of wrinkles – and, of course, the house. So, any eligible ladies looking to upgrade their lives and their digs, shoot me an email).

No Newt Is Good Newt

(This Appeared on January 27th in The Huffington Post)

Watching the Republican presidential debates and the masterful performances given by Newt Gingrich, one can't help but be struck by just how bright a man he is -- because it's no small hurdle to be able to overcome a disgraceful exit from politics and public office and before recent polls in Florida, assume the frontrunner position in the battle for the GOP nomination.

Read More Here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-barbanel/no-newt-is-good-newt_b_1241822.html