Firstly like a lot of others I ignored the super bowl as it has ZERO relevance to Australia in general & me in particular .
Eventually as we get more & more US culture rammed down our throats it will be a national holiday
Right now there is a push for a national holiday for Halloween, something that is again meaningless in OZ but now has been forced upon us .
However if you think of it , just a publicity stunt like that other trollope who had an "accidential " breast flop .
Even worse is her voice is not all that good & her act is at least 80% hype , but that applies to just about all celebrity super stars .
As for the casinos, a very soft way of saying Americans lost 80 billion
The 60 that the casinos declaired as profit ( after costs ) and the 20 of costs .
Now add sports betting , lotteries , animal racing and the other gambling schemes and you have a figure larger than the governments tax take .
And the bulk of it comes from the bottom 20% of the population and all of the profits go to the top 10%
So they are an income distribution from the poor to the rich .
I didn't watch it either, Bert. My wife and I have made an annual event out of the Super Bowl for 39 years. We used to have a whole day of fun for the game. Not this year. I refused to view the game OR the halftime show and my wife said she had ZERO interest in the halftime show, which she usually really liked to see.
Yes, I agree. A lot of what happens during the halftime show is no more than an attempt to garner more attention from the masses. It's truly sad that disgusting displays like this year's show seem to really please a lot of people. When I first saw the video of her rubbing her crotch and smelling her fingers, my mind first thought that I misunderstood what happened. It was kind of like I was trying to make myself believe something like that couldn't have happened on live TV at an event the size of the Super Bowl. When I watched it the second and third times, I came to the realization that she actually did what I was afraid she had done. I just have to wonder what parents had to tell their kids when they asked what she was doing. LOL!
And you just absolutely NAILED the gambling thing, especially your statement about the bulk of it coming from the bottom 20% of the population and all of the profits going to the top 10%. Couldn't be truer. All that money is taken out of the hands of those that really can't afford to lose it. We hear stories of different people we know that have gambled themselves into a tight spot. What is kind of upsetting about that is that we hear stories about people we THOUGHT had a little more common sense. I think the part that disturbs me the most is that all the gambling is not only approved by the state and federal governments, they participate in it. Just like you mentioned, there are dozens and dozens of lotteries and scratch off lotteries run by pretty much every state in the country now. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it seems like our elected officials are deliberately trying to push the bottom 20% down even further. They run all sorts of commercials on TV encouraging people to buy more lottery tickets. Sad state of affairs.
Sorry you that are down under are being pressed to accept any of our culture. I guess I'd have to ask why your government would want to push something like Halloween on you if it was never an official holiday for you. I guess the powers that be down there think it's another way to strip your citizens of more of their money. All holidays here in the states are now nothing more than state sanctioned, commercial, spending sprees. It's all about getting the masses to spend even MORE money on ridiculous holiday items.
In fact, the female part of a young couple we know just asked if we thought she was a terrible mother for NOT buying a bunch of Valentine's Day candy and other such nonsense for their kids. We were quick to commend her for not doing it. We told her that if she REALLY wanted to do something for the kids for Valentine's Day she should get them all in the kitchen and have them help make up some heart shaped sugar cookies. My wife told her to have 2 or 3 different colored icings and a few different colored sprinkles and then let each of the kids decorate the cookies however they wanted, within reason of course. LOL! She said she had never thought about doing something like that, but thought it was a great idea. I told her that her kids will remember spending time with the rest of the family a hell of a lot longer than they'll remember eating another chocolate heart.