Wake up, smell the coffee
Commentary by Tim Dragga

So the only thing more disappointing than the Rams’ wholly unworthy performance was the complete scarcity of wit found in the commercials. Oh, E*Trade monkey how you’ve let me down.

Watching the Rams stumble around on autopilot reminded me of our current president campaigning through the primary, predicting victory but doing little to earn it. The last time I’d seen play calling that conservative was when the Republican higher ups decided to let Alan Keys wander around espousing his own personal form of bigotry on voters in Iowa. Losing serves them right, and did Marshall Faulk even show up to the game?

But who could focus on Kurt Warner and company’s foray into mediocrity when there was the utterly uninspired and monotonous U2 half-time show? Aerosmith may have “stooped” to perform with ’N Sync, but last year’s all-inclusive extravaganza with Nelly, Britney Spears and Mary J. Blige represented every major musical genre (except country) and effortlessly resonated with a vast communal spirit so much more representative of American idealism and values than what was basically a seven-minute excerpt from U2’s overrated “Elevation” tour. (Side note: Not having a corporate sponsor for your tour is completely negated when you have to charge an average of $70 a seat.)
Anyone who might be under the misguided impression that this was impassioned rock and roll needs to put the Creed CD down and start listening to more Oasis.

If you switched over to NBC’s special “Playmate” Fear Factor, you probably shouldn’t be on speaking terms with the rest of society anyway. I have it on good authority that the one with the “jugs” won though, so that should make those of you out there still bobbing your heads to “My Sacrifice” happy.

Now if you’re wondering why U2 is being criticized here, it’s because they insist on being the lone propagators of this myth that they’re the last great rock band. In our dumbed-down age of lowest common denominators, it seems that repeating a simple phrase over and over until it becomes ingrained by route into the public’s subconscious in fact makes it true. How else do you think the government gets you to believe it’s the Democrats who are the big Washington spenders?

On another note, hoping that people wouldn’t pay attention, in the course of getting drunk and watching men strap on padding and run straight smack into each other, President Bush released his new budget Monday. Most of you were far too busy thinking about what kind of DVD player you were going to buy with that $300 to notice that the new administration wasted away the unprecedented surpluses on massive, needless tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations. But “The Matrix” in Dolby 5.1 is surely consolation enough for the country now falling back into deficit spending.

You know, for all the flack Democrats take as being the big spenders they’re usually the ones who manage to not screw up the government’s finances. Breaking with the years of Clinton era prosperity and budget balance, the Bush administration, in an attempt to have its cake and court the voters too, is currently projecting a $106 billion deficit to continue on into next year.

So with deficit spending, the biggest defense budget increase in the last 20 years, and an economic tax plan that will guarantee the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we’re just Molly Ringwald and a “Hair” band away from the full-blown 80s. It just seems to me that if we’re going to spend millions of dollars on tax relief it might make sense to not give the vast majority of it to people who have millions of dollars.

Tim Dragga is a junior political science major from Lubbock. He can be contacted at (t.c.dragga@student.tcu.edu).

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