Half Time

I have a hard time with the gladiatorial violence of football -- a game in which young men line up to smash heads together, resulting in shocking amounts of brain damage that leave the average NFL player in his thirties with severe memory problems at a rate nineteen times the national average and with a life expectancy twenty years lower than that of the general male population.

This Super Bowl, though, I had a particularly hard time with a different sort of violence: the half-time show, when Bruno Mars sang about the joys of sexual predation:

Well looky here, looky here,
Ah what do we have?
Another pretty thang ready for me to grab.
But little does she know
That I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing,
'Cause at the end of the night
It is her I'll be holding.
"I love you so," hey,
That's what you'll say.
You'll tell me,
"Baby baby please don't go away,"
But when I play, I never stay.

But there were bright lights, gold coats, and fancy footwork to distract us, and we could be indignant or amused when some guys were not wearing shirts, and everyone can talk about how miserable the game was...