it was one of those weeks

(Amarillo) Despite living some 1,708 miles from Gillette Stadium, a clear majority of Amarillistas looked at the point spread and at recent Super Bowl history on Sunday afternoon and suddenly decided that they were New England Patriots fans. What is a Super Bowl for after all, if not watching the score run up, and then strutting around gloating about how “we” stomped the opposition despite the fact that “we” were nowhere near the field of play? Even the fact that Massachusetts was rumored to be friendly to liberals made little difference. “We” were all Patriots and that New York team hardly need bother to show up.

That bandwagon was to crash, however, as all bandwagons should. Still, there are those who will take the most dilapidated of bandwagons down off cinder blocks and parade the thing around to see who jumps aboard. And so John McCain’s almost-forgotten Straight-Talk Express was being shined up and jumped upon this week by a growing number of Republicans. Most clear-thinking citizens enjoyed the spectacle of watching that particular vehicle run over the religious right, but some Republicans began to talk of placating the fundamentalists by running Mike Huckabee for Vice President. It’s difficult to imagine that religious fundies would want a job so openly identified with Vice. It’s also difficult, of course, to imagine Huckabee describing the job in the colorful terms employed by Cactus Jack Garner—but surely, under McCain, the sentiment (or is that sediment?) would be the same. Two days after the Super Bowl, all Amarillo Democrats gathered, as was their custom, in an old Volkswagon Bug parked outside of town. They joined other Texas Democrats in celebration of the fact that they might now actually have a voice in the selection of this year’s Democratic candidate. Democrats across the nation glanced in the direction of Pennsylvania Avenue and shuddered in horror to think that Texans might have a voice in the selection of this year’s Democratic candidate.

Meanwhile, two hours to the south, Bobby Knight noticed that a prominent sports figure was getting bad press for throwing a hissy fit - and it wasn't him. If he couldn’t out fit-throw Bill Bellicose, or whatever his name was, it was time to go. So he quickly threw his (or so he claimed) final chair and turned in his badge and his gun. Bobby defenders, as usual, stated loudly that he had always run a clean program. And they were right, if by “clean” you mean meeting the minimal standard of not having major NCAA violations and getting a handful of players to graduate. Cynics, however, pointed out that a large percentage of those sheepskins were returned to the school. It turns out that the players thought the name of their alma mater was misspelled. Wasn’t it supposed to be “Texas Teck”?

It was one of those weeks.

spacedark