A Return to Arms

That's right. I am back for more and what a better way to restart than to go with one of our old reliables, Bill Plaschke. It's an article outlining how important it is that the Saints win. Since this is coming after the Saints's Super Bowl victory (Congrats to them), I cannot do any playful teasing of him not getting his wish. Even so, it's a Plaschke piece so there's certainly something to say about it. From the LA Times website:

One helmet is an ancient symbol of rebirth, an eternal emblem of hope.

The other helmet is footwear for a horse.

America needs the New Orleans Saints to win the Super Bowl.

One team's history can be found in a museum featuring paper bags once worn by embarrassed fans and tear-stained tissues used by happily weeping fans.

The other team's history can be found in a Mayflower moving truck.

America needs the New Orleans Saints to win the Super Bowl.

Here are three of Plaschke's staples: phrase repetition, multiple contrasts and failure to embrace multiple sentence paragraphs. Now, I am not opposed to people who want to have a single sentence or two stand out for emphasis but for nearly every sentence? For the person who suggested that this is a good idea, shame on you. Then again, the joke might well be on me for picking at this.




Nah, it's on Plaschke. ;)

There is no cheering in the press box, but that rule doesn't apply to the sports section, and so allow me a few moments today to lead America in a chant that nobody really understands for a team that has absolutely no chance in a place that has taken them more than four decades to find.

I may not be the award-winning writer that you are, but I am pretty sure the "no cheering" maxim would apply to the sports section as well. Maybe that's why there are blogs like this because you think it's OK to cheer in the box! If you want to do that on a blog, go right ahead.

Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints?

Honestly, I would pay to see him say that. If you are reading this, Mr. Plaschke, I dare you to say this three times on "Around the Horn".

But I'm rooting like crazy for the other guys because America has rarely needed a sports champion the way it needs the Saints.

That they won is a very nice story and I am happy for those fans who have been behind them for many years. Seeing a city win it's first major pro title and particularly one like New Orleans is quite neat. Having said that, the hyperbole is so strong from him.

As our country lurches and heaves through the ankle-deep sand of its economic recovery, it has not helped the national psyche that every time we turn to our national pastimes for assurances that the little guy can still survive, we run smack into Goliath.

-snip-

And now Peyton Manning is getting ready to win another Super Bowl?

No thanks. Not now. Please. America needs to believe in the impossible again. America needs another dose of revival.

-snip-

That cannot be allowed to happen, because perhaps no underdog in Super Bowl history has entered the game as so memorably.

Slow down, man. We are happy for them. Let's not suddenly think this would have been a tragedy for the nation had the Colts won.

The Colts owner, Jim Irsay, is a former bodybuilder still living down the reputation of his late father, Bob, who moved the team to Indianapolis from Baltimore in the middle of the night in 1984.

The Saints owner, Tom Benson, 82, is a round and rollicking man who still celebrates some wins by pulling out an umbrella and prancing along the sidelines as if leading a Mardi Gras parade.

You do realize that if not for this guy among others, that umbrella likely would be strutting elsewhere. Perhaps he would have borrowed a spare Mayflower truck?

Two weeks of hyperbole whittled into two words of meaning.

Go Saints.

Oh now you have realized your ways? Wonderful. You got your wish.

Be happy.