Sidelines
War is what’s on in March
IT was strange.
Thursday, the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament.
The television was on. It was on all day.
Fine. That's an annual tradition. That's normal. That's the way the world should be.
But something was very different.
I didn't watch any games.
Instead, I spent the day with Ted Koppel.
Trying to work, of course. Trying to get things done around the house. But it was always on in the background. And there were times, checking in every so often, when you couldn't tear your eyes away.
This was a new form of March madness.
We have already been through the first round of sports columns and commentators telling us how we need basketball now, how the annual joyous whirlwind of dances danced and dreams lived and dreams dashed can take us away from all of this. How buzzer beaters and upsets and underdogs are here to soothe us in a time of war.
Instead of Donald Rumsfeld and Dan Rather we need Billy Packer and Dick Vitale.
Sports are needed in times like these, they say.
No.
They need this, they do, the people over there, on ships, in the desert, away from home and so far, far away. Their families do, heartsick and worried, over here.
They could use this break, this fantasy world orchestrated by CBS.
(Not to mention the people hiding under the kitchen table, praying that all those bombs really are as smart as Rumsfeld says they are.)
They would probably love to lose themselves in "One Shining Moment," if only for a moment, or two.
They need to forget.
We're fine.
The rest of us need to remember.
The rest of us need to see this.
The rest of us need to watch this.
Every day, the polls say that more and more of us are in favor of war.
We've seen enough basketball.
We've already had our distractions. We've already been swept away.
Well, then let's see what we're supporting, and arguing against.
This is no time for turning away.
BUT NOW IT is Saturday, and the scene is stranger still. The war still rages, and some of our boys have died. Tanks race for Baghdad. A grenade explodes in an American tent. A city's skies are black with smoke.
The television is on. It is on all day.
But on the screen, there is a madness of another sort.
We're already back to nonstop sports. We're back to the commercials and the trombones and the voice-over guy with the excited voice, as if nothing had happened.
A timeout shows pictures of men carried on stretchers, their legs red with blood.
"Now," a somber Rather says, "back to basketball."
The important stuff.
After two days, war is a sports update. I am shocked, and awed.
Kalani Simpson can be reached at ksimpson@starbulletin.com