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While people may profess puritanical principles, those our forefathers inscribed on parchment, today, as the Super Bowl looms large in our collective consciousness, the American public concludes, they cannot adhere to such strict ethical standards.
Admittedly, these beliefs have shaped our laws and sustained a stable society. Americans, we, the people, wish to maintain the moral codes. People say they are proud and proper, except when they are not. The pious and non-believers, each, trust that they practice as they preach, or at least on Sundays. Super Bowl Sunday may the only day on which all bets are off, or on.
Some do not seek corporal satisfactions. Instead, in anticipation of the game, citizens count the possible ways they might come by extra cash. Some bet on which team will win, what songs might be sung, or whether the game will go into overtime. Super Bowl gambling pools are as American as apple pie.
The masses gamble on the fact that society will not judge them as they might judge others who do as they will do. ESPN Writer, Jeff Merron, may have said it best as he mused, Sex goes to the Super Bowl. Forthrightly, Mister Merron spoke of what few will.
Some people say the Super Bowl is all about money. Others say it's all about power. For many, it's all about advertising. A few die-hards insist football's the important thing.
But most of us know that it's really (like everything else) about sex. There are the parties leading up to the game. The groupies. The cheerleaders. A few hot commercials during the broadcast. Halftime quickies, for some big spenders in the corporate boxes.
We could go deeper (pardon the pun), into the realm of academic theory . . . Enough of that. Let's get to the Super Bowl sex lore.
In the beginning, ancestral wisdom was welcome. Quotes from our forbearers, the colonist trusted, would not lead us astray. Words of acumen avowed that then, we were a country united in faith. The new world was young when, on June 21, 1776, John Adams, a future President, penned a letter to his cousin Zabdiel Adams. In the epistle, he proclaimed, "[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue."
Ample evidence establishes the essential value of religion in this nation. Yet, as we aged, some would say we have forgotten our ways. It is written, in the Daily Resource for Entrepreneurs, the canon that best describes America today. Sex Sells More [Now] Than Ever.
Yet, the Protestant ethic of earlier generations remains strong. Many believe America is a Christian nation. Others argue it is not. That debate aside, perhaps the people in this country may acknowledge that the country is as its citizens are conflicted. Residents of this great land are ready to act in ways they claim are repugnant.
Hence, while sex sells it does so behind the scenes. Sales are hidden from view, just as the women who might stimulate a sexual thought are. Super Bowl spectators in 2004 might recall the first time and what seems to be the last occasion, a female performer appeared on the field for halftime festivities.
On that infamous day, a bit of bare breast was exposed broadly. What was difficult to see from the bleachers, and only visible for but a second live, and in person, was the source of much sexual stimulation for those with an imagination. Fines were slapped on broadcasters, later rescinded, and then, to ensure that all of America understood the seriousness of the situation, the case, in November 2008, was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States for "appropriate" review.
While it may seem that the action, gyrating genitals, bouncing "t and a" are in or barred from the Bowl, what really rotates the pelvis is found on the streets of whatever city hosts the event. This year, the exploits are held in Tampa Bay, Florida.
Throughout the week before the main event, people prepare for climatic celebrations. Excitement is high, as are the prospects for an erection. The Road to Super Bowl XLIII is flanked by 43 strip clubs. In "The Big Guava," as the city is sometimes called , there is Lip Stixx, Centerfolds and the Bliss Cabaret. Down the street a visitors, or a resident can enter Diamond Dolls and Bare Assets. The Wild Gentlemen's Club is quite the haunt. Indeed, there are 43 erotic dance emporiums in the Tampa metropolitan area.
(O)ne for each Super Bowl. And the week of Super Bowl XLIII is to Tampa's naughty nightlife what Black Friday is to America's shopping malls.
All the exotic dancing joints have earned Tampa a bawdy reputation _ the lads' magazine, Maxim, even put it on its top 10 list of best U.S. party cities a couple years ago, based mostly on the two score and more night spots to see naked or nearly naked women.
Bare bottom babes, oh my. What might the forefathers think or say. Surely, John Adams, often regarded as the most influential of the founding fathers, would offer his words of woe. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." He may then adjoin "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with passions unbridled by morality and religion." Each might explain why the police force in Tampa Bay proposed as they did.
Tampa Bay spokeswoman Andrea Davis said officers will not patrol the clubs. Law enforcement will not look for dancers who get too close to patrons. Ms Davis affirmed in 2001, when the city last hosted the games, no reports were filed. She then offered; officers are obliged to investigate if someone complains, few customers are likely to protest when a performer leans in and snuggles in those special ways.
Participants at The Adult Entertainment Expo, 2008, might best explain why in a nation so pious, the police will hear few if any objections to the pleasure found in the wondrous world of titillation. What is hidden behind walls, is not thought to be a thorny issue.
(T)world's largest sex industry trade show, attracts as many as 30,000 visitors and more than 400 registered exhibitors every year, including a growing number of small-business owners, organizers say.
"There's an extremely supportive environment out there . . ." says Suki Dunham, the 39-year-old co-owner of OhMiBod, a Greenland, N.H.-based vibrator company she and her husband launched in 2006. Dunham, a former marketer at Apple, used [the 2008] event to unveil a new line of Naughtinanos, an iPhone-compatible device that vibrates in sync with a caller's voice.
Officers will have their hands full with what is in full view, as could be expected in a country where citizens claim to honor a code of ethical standards and then gravitate to the will of their genitals. Even still, Tampa Bay locals, and lawmakers, true Americans, tired of the city's sleazy reputation wish to maintain a modicum of decorum.
However, no matter how hard "The Big Guava" residents work to clean up the street, regardless of the reprimands, there seems to be no way to control the flow of dollars in the sex trade or the lack of sense that is all too rampant in this "ethical" nation. The second President understood that the government was powerless. He had hoped the people might self-regulate. "Religion & virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society."
President Adams asserted; "Statesmen, my dear sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand."
Perchance that explains why in a nation as virtuous as the United States, the sex toy market, in the United States, which, "excludes the pornography industry, accounts for up to $2 billion in total adult industry sales every year."
Toys, thankfully, are the treasures that allow for the appearance of civility Americans do not worry of what remains hidden from view. What hinders the image of a healthy righteous America, is what comes out from the clubs and onto the streets, the week the Super Bowl is in town.
Prostitution is the problem, or a commercial that promotes a vegetarian diet.
Law officers have come to expect that they cannot control for human vices, even in a country so safe from sin and saintly as the United States is.
In this country, we claim to be guided by G-d. Devout citizens describe the homeland as Fisher Ames, of the Federalist Party did in an oration on the Sublime Virtues of General George Washington. In 1800, the political leader stated, "Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers."
Perhaps, that is the paradigm. In the United States, morals and religion do not reign on the heart; however, these do produce public opinion. Until the opinion that governs the spirit is identical the one that governs rulers, Super Bowl Sunday will be as Mondays through Saturdays are normally, seconds, minutes, hours, day, months, and years of American hypocrisy.
References, religion, and realities . . .
- Super Bowl Sunday. MSNBC. February 1, 2009
- Tampa Police Launch Sex Crime Sweep. By Warren Elly. Fox News 13. Tampa. January 26, 2009
- Super Bowl LXIII: Game On. Associated Press. My Fox LA. February 1, 2009
- Bet on Super Bowl Halftime Songs, Overtime, By Joe Saumarez-Smith. Bloomberg. January 30, 2009
- Super Bowl gambling pools as American as apple pie. By Tim Grace. Enterprise. January 2009
- Sex goes to the Super Bowl, By Jeff Merron. ESPN. January 2009
- Is America a Christian Nation> By Carl Pearlston. Catholic Education Resource. 2001
- FCC, DOJ Appeal Janet Jackson To Supreme Court, By John Eggerton. Broadcasting & Cable. November 21, 2008
- Debating America's Christian Character, By Barbara Bradley Hagerty. Morning Edition. May 5, 2005
- Why Sex Sells More Than Ever, By Angus Loten. Inc. The Daily Resource for Entrepreneurs. January 2008
- Road to Super Bowl XLIII flanked by 43 strip clubs. By Mitch Stacy. KOB TV. Associated Press. January 26, 2009
- Super Bowl Crackdown: Tampa Police Targeting Prostitutes. By Josh Poltilove. The Tampa Tribune. January 26, 2009
- PETA Veggie Love Commercial Banned from Superbowl XLIII. YouTube. January 29, 2009
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