While the most odious piece of Super Bowl journalism was achieved, flagrantly, when Rick Reilly decided it was his place to tell Colin Kaepernick how to run his complicated family life, the silver-medal podium had remained fallow until today. We can all thank the scorched shell of the Times-Picayune to fill the void with Doug MacCash's recap of Playboy's Super Bowl party. At once vapid, tepid, obsequious, dull, aloof and boner-nostalgic, it may be everything that's wrong with everything that's wrong.
The piece of journalism [sic] begins with the line "The Super Bowl 2013 Playboy party at the Jax Brewery was a dream come true" and hastens to devolve from there. You should read the whole thing, if you're feeling particularly constipated. Not since the last Gun Appreciation Day rally did a man so fawn over something being sold to him. It's like peering into the mind of a person who is moved to tears by dog food commercials. Indirectly it explains the existence of Branson, Mo. It exemplifies the journalist as a dandruff-nibbling bird on the shoulders of the famous. This is the newspaper version of Lenin's "useful idiots." I mean, for the love of David Foster Wallace, why do you send someone to cover an event as cosmically inane as a Super Bowl party sponsored by Playboy and have your reporter play it totally straight?
The short version is this. Late at night, Snoop Lion (nee Dogg) comes in and causes a stir by walking up a staircase. No one the reporter knows got to hang out with him. Playmates are pretty and they weren't wearing much. Red carpets are great because you see Tom Arnold. Many of the party-goers were rich. And by the end? "Decades old expectations were more or less met." That's the kicker. There is one actual quote in the story, and it is, "Hey, Snoop!" You know who yelled that? "A supplicant" who was "hoping for a nod or a gesture." Seriously, this party was off the chain!
Also, these were sentences:
Nothing quite matches the imagination of course, but the celebrity-centered bash certainly didn't disappoint.
When I first arrived, the playmates stationed outdoors were dressed in shoulder-less outfits. That must be chilly, I said to myself. Isn't it sad that that's what crossed my mind?
One of the young women pointed out that since Playboy is a monthly magazine; there are only 12 of them per year. I'd actually never looked at it that way. That means appearing as a Playboy playmate is probably statistically less likely than appearing in a Super Bowl, right?
The celebrities face a Roman phalanx of cold white television lights and black-eyed Cyclops cameras wielded by hyper-attentive media folk.
I'm here to tell you, seeing celebrities in person is great fun. And when I tell my kids what I did at work that day (or night, as the case may be), they listen attentively.
Everyone was tall, expertly dressed and styled. Many of the younger men looked like fashion-conscious athletes, the older men were gray and handsome like polished granite; the women of every age were glittering gemstones.
Onstage, [Trombone Shorty] is Vesuvius—those Super Bowl numerals make the Roman allusions irresistible. Rapper B.o.B. also put on a spirited show.
Gentle reader, are you not transported? It's just like being there when you obviously should be anywhere else.
Super Bowl 2013 Playboy Party, of millionaires and movie stars [NOLA.com]