[Ominous music intensifies]

For the past few years, the Super Bowl been a weird exercise in melancholy for me, largely because it’s a reminder of one of the last nights I spent with my father, in 2021. The whole family all gathered around him in his bed with an iPad while he tried to straddle the line between pain and opioid-induced unconsciousness. As my brother says, crying at the Super Bowl may be an unusual way to mourn, but it’s not a bad one.

But it’s not just a moment of reflection for me because it’s close to the anniversary of his death. It’s also because football still remains America’s game, but I don’t follow it closely, so watching it feels like being a foreigner looking in at the diminished mainstream of our culture, eroded as it is by hyper-segmentation and factionalism.

(In 2017, I went to a Super Bowl party with a friend who brought her new roommate, Dora, badly jet-lagged and less than 48 hours into living in America. We assured Dora that she didn’t need to follow the game, because this was just an excuse to eat some snacks. But it was the legendary Pats/Falcons overtime game, and at some point I looked over at her trying to parse six very loud conversations and an unfamiliar game in what I think was her third or fourth best language, and felt amazed that it was even possible to comprehend. I try to imagine what it felt like sometimes. It’s probably good for us to imagine being in a situation like that from time to time, even if we don’t experience it directly ourselves).

Anyway, this year, like in 2017, like in 2021, the Super Bowl felt just weird as hell. Above all else, above even Samuel L. Jackson making explicit the subtext of a profoundly political halftime show, was the paranoia. I cannot stop thinking about how many ads were built from a base of twisted conspiracy: Tom Brady is a robot, celebrities are aliens, football exists solely to sell us unhealthy food, the pharmaceutical industry is trying to keep us sick and poor on purpose (so get an online doctor to prescribe you these off-brand compounded weight loss injections, which have bypassed normal safety reviews).

Yes, I know, everything is driven by a conspiracy theory these days. And I know that some of those conspiracies are real, slipping in alongside arrant nonsense both silly and dangerous. But it feels more than a little tasteless to joke about the paranoia to sell batteries or frying pans or off-brand injectables.

I mean, we all went back and read The Paranoid Style in American Politics during the first Trump administration, didn’t we? (If not, go read it again. It’s not long.)

…. or is that just me being paranoid?

Daily Doomscroll

• Remember ACORN? Yeah, they’re doing the same shit to USAID.

• Remember people claiming universities were basically leftist? Harvard clubs just hosted a white-nationalist conclave featuring Steve Bannon. Among the speakers was Penn Law professor Amy Wax, who argued that “it’s important to have a European majority” in America. (Wax has famously kept her professorship, despite years of overtly horrible behavior that began with claims that Black students aren’t equipped to study law, something that is now apparently grounds for an invitation to speak at Harvard).

• Progressive governance failures have made America less mobile. That’s especially bad given that a lot of Americans will need to move from places that are hostile to their existence or rights, or from places increasingly prone to being on fire or underwater.

• A weightlifter on RFK Jr.’s claims about health, exercise, and gender-affirming treatment. (TLDR: yes, he lifts, a little. Yes, exercise is good for you. Yes, he’s a hypocrite who takes hormones and vaccinated his kids even as he tells others they should avoid both. No, pointing all this out won’t change anything in any way that matters).

• A return to apartheid.

• Scientific American on how to avoid outrage fatigue while staying informed.

Joy

• Dog stuck in sweatpants

• Cat drinking from faucet

• BUNNY