Somewhere in Green Bay Packerland, also known as Wisconsin, there’s a photo I want suppressed. It captures me in an embarrassing position, not only eating crow, but also looking ridiculous. Packer fans — I was standing before hundreds of them at a Milwaukee hotel — laughed, cheered, and generally enjoyed my humiliation. But, geez, I hadn’t done that much to rile them. All I did was write that the Dallas Cowboys are America’s team, and a conservative team to boot.
But I’ll get back to all that later. First, I want to talk about the great conservative event coming up on January 25, the Super Bowl. Real conservatives never miss a Super Bowl. Liberals often spend Super Sunday at the movies or browsing at Borders. They loathe the event, the game, the whole bit. Of course, some sports events are liberal, notably the World Series. It’s liberal because baseball is non-violent, fairly boring, and loved by liberals. Football is faster, very violent, and loved by conservatives. So it follows that the ultimate conservative sports event is the Super Bowl.
Now, in addition to conservative and liberal events and sports (boxing is conservative, soccer liberal), there are conservative and liberal teams. This year we’re in luck. Both teams, the Packers and the Denver Broncos, are conservative. I don’t say this off the top of my head. I’ve got criteria: home, owner, fans, style of play. Plus, teams get credit if they’ve got big- time conservatives on the roster (both of these do).
We’ll start with home. Green Bay is a small, conservative Wisconsin city. Denver is liberal. It sent Pat Schroeder, Tim Wirth, and Federico Pena to Washington. Advantage Green Bay. The Pack is community-owned. That’s not as socialist as it sounds, since the nearly 1,800 people with shares are middle- class and business types. The Broncos are supposedly owned by a rich guy named Pat Bowlen. Actually, two off-shore trusts controlled by his 80-year- old mother own the team. Bowlen once apologized to the fans for wearing a raccoon coat to a game. No conservative would have felt guilty about that. But Bowlen has a redeeming feature: He’s a tax rebel. He whipped the IRS in a $ 1.35 million tax dispute.
I’ll stipulate that fans in both towns are conservative. And while the Packers and Broncos have different playing styles, both are conservative. Both have a mean, brutal, and relentless (thus conservative) defense. Green Bay, with Brett Favre at quarterback, is more flamboyant on offense. Favre, a working-class guy from Mississippi, looks to me like a Reagan Democrat. He’s wild and woolly, the Billy Tauzin of pro football. John Elway of Denver is a disciplined and always effective quarterback. And he really is a conservative Republican. “As a business owner, I couldn’t imagine being anything else,” he told Rep. Bob Schaffer, Republican of Colorado. Elway, who owns six car dealerships but zero Super Bowl rings, is the Steve Forbes of pro football.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Elway wants to get into politics after football. He visited Capitol Hill last year to get a briefing from six Colorado Republicans about life in the elected lane. For the time being, though, Elway is keeping a low political profile. “Democrats buy cars, too,” he once said.
Elway is no Mark Chmura. An all-pro tight end for the Packers, Chmura does not hide his two-fisted conservatism. When President Clinton dropped by a Packer practice in September 1996, Chmura stayed away. Later, he said he hoped Bob Dole would be president should the Packers win the 1997 Super Bowl and get an invitation to the White House. When both things happened but Clinton was still president, Chmura skipped the White House ceremony to play in a charity golf tournament. His wife, Lynda, said it wasn’t a big political thing. “It’s a small political thing,” she explained.
Okay, back to my moment of distress. Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal played a role here. A Green Bay native, he used his column to insist the Packers, not the Cowboys, are America’s team, and to zing me. A few months later, with the Packers installed as Super Bowl champs, I addressed a Wisconsin Right-to-Life dinner. I was seated, not coincidentally, at the table of Bob Harlan, the president of the Packers.
After my speech, the emcee, author and talk-radio host Charles Sykes, invited me back to the stage for a special presentation. I thought maybe I’d get a nice plaque. Instead I got a cheesehead, the yellow headgear of Packer fanatics. I thanked Sykes sheepishly and started to leave the stage. Not so fast, Sykes said. Put it on. I’ll do it later, I suggested. Now, he said, and the audience cheered wildly. I realized I wasn’t going to get off the stage until I put the cheesehead on. So I did. I stood there in a dark blue suit, white shirt, rep tie, and cheesehead. And some guy snapped a picture. Fortunately, the photo hasn’t gotten around. So far, so good.
FRED BARNES
