Human Conflict

So what's more fun, watching the Super Bowl or watching Chris Christie writhing on TV trying to explain the utter moronity of a bridge closing as possible retribution for not supporting him politically?

Will

I like football, always have. But other than learning that a great many of its pro players will be suffering the tortures of hell at age 50 from concussions while playing, I'm not sure what I learn about the world and human nature. Coaches years ago always told their charges in midget leagues and high school that it prepared them for life. Now it prepares a great many of them for early disability.

Gov. Christie, on the other hand, gives us political theater. Juicy, ham-fisted, and filled with Shakespearian plots of revenge and betrayal. One could argue that's true of any TV reality show, but in TV reality shows, hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds aren't floating around in the interstices  of it all.

The Bard knew one important fact, as we do: the evil that men do lives after them. I'm not sure anyone committed anything illegal, much less evil in the whole mess of Bridgegate. Gov. Christie may come out of this smelling like a rose. He could wind up being president. Good and terrible men have become president and will again.

But maybe the Bard reminds us, as we watch football fade for another year, what the point of it all can be. This, from Sonnet VI:

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
   To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.