TROUBL

So we’ve had a little over a week now to get used to the idea of President Barack Obama. The way that transformed from a “wouldn’t it amazing if…” into reality is a great thing to contemplate–not the least of which is because, if you voted for Obama, you’re in the majority. In the America we’ve lived in for the last decade, being all about a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, who runs on a platform of ending a stupid war and treating people with less money more compassionately, has not been the sort of thing that gives you much in common with your neighbors. It’s why I like to talk about football.

Even if the strangers I meet are all Minnesota Vikings fanatics, we can at least find middle ground in our overwhelming hatred for Brett Favre.

[morning in america] But what the fuck? These days, even Brett Favre is off my enemies list. I understand for the first time why America found it so easy to root for that interception-prone son of a bitch, after ten weeks of watching him scramble around the field in a Jets uniform. Get him out of the green and yellow and he’s just an old dude trying to make a go of things in a tough world, and who can’t show some love for that?

Even Bears, Vikings, and Lions fans can show some love for the man they’ve hated for over a decade if he’s using his powers to dismantle the New England Patriots. Hell yes. These days, we hate our own quarterbacks up in the NFC North.

Well, not our starters. It’s the backups who fill us with loathing. Ask a Vikings fan how eager he is to see Tavaris Jackson back in purple, or a Lions fan how excited he is for John Kitna to return to the field. Ask me,an angsty Chicago Bears fanatic who desperately hopes Rex Grossman contracts a fatal case of whooping cough before the end of the season, how excited I am for Kyle Orton to return to the field. The answer is fucking very. Rex Grossman? Jesus, I hope a house falls on his dick.

[that's what they said about kerry collins, too] You know who agrees with me on that? President-Elect Obama. He might not be able to say it publicly–he is the President of all Americans these days, including the failed quarterbacks and useless backups who should have never been allowed in the league in the first place–but the rumor hovers that he spent the week prior to the beginning of the regular season on the phone with Bears head coach Lovie Smith, lobbying him to give Kyle Orton the starting job over Grossman. One can be fairly certain that he spent at least part of this past Sunday afternoon gripping the armrests of some plush chair, frustrated and staring at the injured Orton on the sidelines as the Bears struggled to get outside of their own ten yard line under Grossman’s tutelage… He did, after all, make time for football even during a busy campaign season, and this is the most relaxed period he’s likely to see over the next several years.

So who knows what the future holds? The world is open to relative newcomers like Barack Obama and Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco, and it has plenty of love left for older men experiencing an unexpected second act like Collins, Favre, Kurt Warner and Joe Biden. The only people it’s being cruel to at the moment are the ones who flew too close to the sun, only to end up a frightening disappointment- your Matt Leinarts andRex Grossmans and Sarah Palins.

[what are you talking about?] Well, metaphors like these do my heart some good, but they don’t actually say anything about the world in which we live. And who cares about that right now? It’s Thursday night, and the Patriots are being beaten like a gong by the New York Jets. Barack Obama is going to be the President soon, and there isn’t much to complain about tonight. Tonight, we can just enjoy musing on the world as it is, not as we wish it would be. Hell, who can tell? We may actually get to see something not too far away from that if we keep at it.