A Delicious Moment

When I found out that the Who were going to be yesterday’s Super Bowl halftime entertainment, my first thought was, “When will those baby boomers go away?” I can’t believe the top demographic watching the game is people my age who remember that group in their prime. Not only that, two of the original four are dead from drug abuse, and their music was always long on histrionics and energy and short of musicianship. So I didn’t mind that the Indian family Ginny and I were “watching the game” with turned the volume down when the music started.

But I should have been paying attention. While the stage was being set up, they played a video clip set to the Who’s first hit, “My Generation,” and consisted of half-second flashes of everything a boomer would remember, things like Vietnam, Martin Luther King, and Desert Storm. Just what we need: politics as entertainment.

Then the boys took the overblown stage. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey can’t jump around like they used to, and neither are to be confused with the handsome sex symbols they once were. And of course, they started trotting out the old war horses, “Pinball Wizard,” “Baba O’Riley,” and maybe some I didn’t know, all with a bazillion-dollar fireworks display. Ho hum.

But wait. Are they . . . ? Yes, they are! Listen:

We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on
Sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
...


Change it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fall that’s all
But the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
. . .

And then, the grand finale, to more fireworks than anyone should ever shoot off,

Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss.

For those of us who consider O-bomb-a just another Bush, having the non-football moment of our nation’s biggest holiday capped off with a poke in his eye was a delicious moment that makes up in part for the pro-war flyovers and American flags on uniforms that mar sports otherwise. Thanks, Bridgestone. Thanks, CBS. Thank you, God.

Too bad no one was paying attention.