One man's war against the law of supply and demand:
“We were talking about the Super Bowl,” he said the other day, “and how I really wanted a ticket. One of my buddies said, ‘Don’t waste your time — they’re too expensive.’ But at some point, you have to commit to the decision. You have to say, ‘I really want to go.’ ”
And so he switched on his computer and did what thousands of sports fans did in recent weeks: He went to the National Football League’s website and embarked upon a hunt. The site referred him to Ticketmaster, the league’s official broker, where he found to his chagrin that his friend was right: Even “cheap” seats for the game were already selling at astronomical prices. Logging on to StubHub.com, he discovered much the same.
Yeah. I was surprised too. You'd almost think that the Super Bowl was kind of a big deal. It even has Super in the name. This small personal tragedy did not dissuade twenty-eight year old Josh Finkelman from pursuing his sporting dream. Nope. He's an American and Americans never say die. Not at Valley Forge. Not at Gettysburg. Not at Bastogne and sure as hell not at the Meadowlands Sports Complex. Being a young American, however, he did what Americans of his generation were taught to do when disappointed in life: He called a lawyer.
What Mr. Finkelman did, on Jan. 6, was to commence Civil Action No. 3:14-cv-00096, formally known on the docket as Josh Finkelman v. National Football League. The complaint, a class action in federal court in Newark, is unlikely to go down as a social justice tort on par with tobacco litigation or the Agent Orange case, but it is the first suit that a football fan aggrieved by the price of tickets has filed against the N.F.L.
Good Night America. It's been nice knowing you. Try not to take the rest of the continent with you in this spiral toward and past madness. In a sane world this young man would be mocked and ridiculed, not encouraged. He's complaining about pricey tickets at the biggest sporting event in North America. Not that he couldn't get the tickets, but that he had to pay a lot of money for them. Somehow it's the NFL's fault that your stupid and greedy.
The above article is featured in that beloved resource for sports fans, The New York Times. Now, ladies and gentlemen, what are the odds that the editors of the Gray Lady have any genuine interest in American football? Does the Sulzburger family throw around the old pig skin after Thanksgiving Dinner? Is Monday morning water cooler talk at the Times dominated by Sunday night's game?
Of course not.
To the American elite football is what distracts the masses from the manifest injustices American life. If the fat idiots weren't so busy watching the NFL they'd spend their time reading avant garde poetry and voting straight ticket for the Democrats. The American ruling classes hates football and with good reason, it personifies many of the best aspects of American life.
This absurd story is merely a chance to give a cheap shot to the capitalist system. Having dispensed with most real injustices, the American Left must now seek out pseudo-tragedies. Since evil white racists no longer beat up black people, Ivy League graduates can no longer pretend to be involved in grave social issues. They could, of course, help poor people in their own community. The thing about poor people, especially in Manhattan, is that they have horrible tastes. Virtually none of them, for instance, read The New York Review of Books.
Don't laugh too hard. What the American Left starts the Canadian Left has a nasty habit of trying to finish. If I was running Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment I'd be getting nervous right now.
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