An American group is currently petitioning to get the Obama administration to make the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday. While the petition has not yet reached the 100,000 signatures required for the administration to actually take a serious look at it, its very existence sets a precedent where people may want to create other useless holidays just to give them a day at home to deal with heartburn and regret.
The media coverage of the event doesn’t help the cause, as commercials and celebrity appearances create a spectacle that seems bigger than it really is. Is the vast majority of the population really into football this much?
The fact a holiday is only proposed for football brings into question of how Canadians would react. Would we want our own holiday after the Stanley Cup finals? Would we follow our American counterparts into the Super Bowl spectacle? Just because this event is marketed as a time to party does not mean it is forgivable to need time off the following day.
Football just seems to play off on people’s primal desires, creating an event packed with violence and excitement. American football has simple rules and a slow pace, and the finals are condensed into one game where the loser has no chance to rebound. The fact the day of completion is predetermined may provide insight into why this is the sport that has garnered such a petition.
As a large part of American culture, this petition will likely reach the amount of signatures required to reach the Obama administration—it’s not like less feasible petitions haven’t made this milestone in the past. While the holiday is unlikely to actually occur, people would definitely take advantage of it to party even harder.
Whether or not a national holiday is declared, people are likely going to use their sick days to take the time off work anyway, and creating a holiday to get around this is just an embodiment of the stereotype of lazy American culture.
Overall, there should not be a holiday specifically for an over-marketed sporting event, as it sets a precedent that not only puts a sporting event on par with religious holidays and events of actual historical significance, but also sets a precedent of a lazy culture that would rather engorge itself with greasy food and beer than take it easy for one night.
—The Gazette Editorial Board
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It’s heartening to see student journalists take a look around, and see the forest from the trees. All too frequently, campus periodicals restrict themselves to covering local issues, such as campus politics, metropolitan news affecting their school, and all manner of cultural bunk. To this, I emphatically ask—WHO CARES?
I’ve had enough of this small minded piffle. Student media is no less valid a voice on foreign policy (i.e., domestic policies of foreign states), and has the obligation—nay, the MORAL IMPERATIVE—to raise its voice when others are felled by fear and cowardice.
“First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
…..
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Thank you for speaking out.