Don’t know how anyone couldn’t have loved the Super Bowl. From a football standpoint, it had almost everything a fan of the game could have wanted, and a few things a fan couldn’t have expected: Should the Giants have gone ahead and scored that touchdown at the end or stopped at the 1-yard line to run clock?
What a catch Mario Manningham made on that last Giants drive, what a throw from Eli Manning, what sports drama — a have-to drive with the Lombardi Trophy on the line, and, then, a desperate final possession left for one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history, a three-time champion.
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You know about all that.
But one of the best moments of the night came outside of football. It came at the half — from an old, leathery star who not only could still kick all of our butts, but who also stole the show. I’m not talking about Madonna, although, at 53, the sinewy pop singer looked and sounded fine.
I mean Clint Eastwood.
The 81-year-old actor/director narrated a gravelly-but-ultimately-optimistic two-minute spot from Chrysler that did more than sell cars, it made it straight that it is halftime in America, that the country as a whole can fight back from hard times, just the way automakers in Detroit have. (Although there was no mention of the multi-billion-dollar bailout provided from the feds.)
Maybe I’m a sap, but I bought the idea, and thought it was stirring.
When Eastwood tells all of us that, if we fight back, everything’s going to be OK, the economy will rebound, more jobs are coming and we’ll find a way out, for the love of heaven and earth, who’s going to argue with the man?
Not me.
He delivered the message with the same heft as his classic get-off-my-lawn line … Get off my lawn! … from Gran Torino. Some claim the halftime-in-America spot was an Obama campaign ad. I saw it as something more.
"We find our way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we make one," Eastwood growled.
"… This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do, the world’s gonna hear the roar of our engines."
Good stuff, indeed.
GORDON MONSON hosts "The Gordon Monson Show" weekdays from 2-6 p.m. on 97.5 FM/1280 AM The Zone. Twitter: @GordonMonson.
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