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05/26/2005: "Target of Opportunity"

I got some inspiration from a newswire story today, the one about how NBA owners like Mark Cuban are agitating to put commercial logos on sports uniforms for basketball players. I hadn’t realized how pervasive the practice is throughout all sports. Not that I wasn’t aware of NASCAR promotional practices, where every square inch of outer surface is commercially accounted for. I learned something new from the article, that trademarked symbols now appear on virtually every sports uniform (sounds like Sher needs to get out more!) It hit me that the country at large is missing out on the huge win-win opportunity presented by the greatest sporting entertainment of our times, that grand spectacle of life and death known as Bush Administration Foreign Relations. Think about all the birds that can be killed with a single stone-wash patch! Corporations would clearly fall over themselves for the opportunity to position their brand in alignment with proper Red State values. (Is it any coincidence that the ultimate Red State sport, stock car racing – or rather watching stock car racing – is also the most logoed sports spectacle? Is it any coincidence that stock car racing has the second highest body count, after BAFR?) Wouldn’t it be a nice change of pace for bigtime corporate money to be pouring into the national treasury, reducing the national deficit and debt, as opposed to merely overflowing the coffers of Tom DeLay et al? Of course, there are some delicate issues to be addressed. For example, what if, say, Target wants to display their logo on, say, Bradley fighting vehicles? One option would be for the Pentagon to reinforce the area under the logo, such that the enemy is tempted to waste fire on an invulnerable spot, not unlike the big eye-figure on tropical fishtails that entices predators to misstrike. Ultimately, though, this is probably a non-issue, raised to consciousness only by the hyperactive sensitivities of this Blue State journalist. After all, both the players and the spectators recognize that the bullseye is already there, whether it’s visible or not, so We the People might as well get some remuneration for it!