On Friday, my wife and I walked from our house near downtownIndianapolis to the Super Bowl village. The game was more than a week away, butthe whole area was already crowded. It appeared that every pavilion and tentwithin 500 miles was either already set up or currently being assembled in thestreets and parking lots of downtown Indianapolis.
There are giant Super Bowl sculptures, at least threestages, dozens of outdoor bars, a zip line down the middle of Capitol Avenue,and half a dozen buildings wrapped in enormous Microsoft Kinect ads. Here’s ashot of Monument Circle:
As I walked around this temporary amusement park, I got moreand more depressed. Why? For every scene like this:
There’s also one like this:
Now, I know that only a minority of the people holding signsare actuallyhomeless or hungry. And giving money to panhandlers only exacerbates theproblem. But the dichotomy between the glittering temporary bars and stages forSuper Bowl XLVI and the panhandlers points up a real problem in our society—onethat calls The Hunger Games to mymind.
Are the fashionable spectacles of the Super Bowl Village reallythat different from the glitz and glamor of the Capitol District? And while wedon’t have any place labeled District 12, you could easily form one among thepopulation of Indianapolis. Consider this:
167,000residents of Indianapolis live below the federal poverty line
63,000 ofthem are children
34,000residents will go hungry at some point this year.
3,000 willbe homeless at some point this year.
About 50 homelesspeople in Indianapolis will die of exposure this winter.
And considerthese stats:
Lucas Oil Stadium cost $750,000,000, of which $650,000,000 was public tax money.
The SuperBowl will cost at least $29,000,000 ($25,000,000 from private donors and $4,000,000 from the Capitol Improvement Board, which is publicly funded.)
No, we don’tkill 23 kids per year for our entertainment. Football only kills about four people each year, making it a relatively safe sport (gymnastics, cheerleading, anddownhill skiing are far more dangerous.) But as I walked through the Super BowlVillage on Friday, I had the feeling that I was bearing witness to aninevitable slide—America becoming Panem.
What do youthink? Please convince me I’m wrong in the comments. I’m getting depressed allover again.
