THE SANDY HOOK BOWL

Less than two months ago, a man entered an elementary school in Newtown, CT. and shot to death twenty children and six adult staff.

Today, a group of surviving children from the Sandy Hook school were paraded out on a football field to sing "America the Beautiful" along with pop belter Jennifer Hudson, whose mother and brother were also shot to death a few years ago. The director of this spectacle made sure to include lots of cutaway shots to teary-eyed football players, just to remind people that they were still supposed to be sad.

What is noble or healing or supportive in any way about allowing a group of traumatized children to be used by a giant commercial enterprise -- the NFL and the Super Bowl -- to bring in more gawking victim-viewers to generate MORE AD REVENUE for a brain-and-bone crushing sport? What is "beautiful" about "America" in reminding viewers that we are so quick to profit off the salient misery of others, while doing nothing to stop more misery from occurring?

I don't care if the NFL shoved a million dollars at Sandy Hook. I don't care if the view is, hey, give these poor kids a free trip to the Super Bowl so they can get autographs from pop stars and athletes whose brains will be so scrambled by football-related concussions that they might someday suffer Parkinsonian tremors or severe personality changes or commit suicide. I don't care if you want to push a bunch of bullshit at me that life goes on and our country is still the best and we all should find hope and peace in the faces of the kids that were so damn lucky not to get killed at their school that day.

Less than two months ago, the blood and the gore and the horror were incomprehensible, ghastly, fresh. Today, the blood is mopped up, the dead are buried, and fake sentiment is delivered in the nation's cathedral, a fucking football stadium, floodlights burning, cameras whirring, money flowing in red, gushing, pulsing rivers.