i love morris: Did you "imbibe" for the Super Bowl?

Monday, February 9, 2026

Did you "imbibe" for the Super Bowl?

"Stay stunned for the Stupor Bowl," an announcer once crowed. Then he corrected, sort of: "Stay souped for the Super Bowl." Maybe the anecdote was funnier in an earlier time when society got more laughs from drunk humor. Or, when country music fans were enthusiastic about "Moe and Joe." That would be Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley. They were "good old boys." They knew how to make a buck from the cultural zeitgeist.

Upon researching "Moe and Joe" years later, I read that their music was written "tongue in cheek." I ran this by an age peer of mine, someone who like me was attuned to the pop culture of the earlier time, and he departed from that thinking. So did I. We took the music seriously. The alcohol theme coincided with "outlaw country" that even got the imprimatur of the Jimmy Carter administration.

One thing is for sure: social drinking was quite approved when I was a young adult. Those were the days when Minnesota Vikings fans applauded our "Purple People Eaters." Tremendous pain upon looking back, as we got so excited for four Super Bowl appearances only to have to lick our wounds after each one. We can feel the sting years later.

Our pent-up wounds were salved years later when the Minnesota Twins won the World Series. That big year was 1987. A repeat performance came in 1991.

So my generation has put aside the Super Bowl disappointments? From my viewpoint, no. How to deal with it? Maybe with alcohol a la "Moe and Joe?" That would just be a joke. But do today's younger folks even see humor in references to excess alcohol? Young people might not believe how much humor we once found in it. I assure you this is no myth.

Natalie Wood

In a recent discussion on the Natalie Wood mysterious death, someone pointed out how the threesome on the boat were engaged in alcohol consumption, and that "that's what people did in those days." I graduated from high school in 1973 right at the time our elders felt the drinking age should be lowered to 18. So we heard the argument "if young men can be forced into combat (in Vietnam), young people that age ought to have the privilege of consuming alcohol."

Well, two points to be made on that. Why were young men being drafted and sent over to Vietnam where odds were good that something terrible was going to happen to them, including death? Our nation put up with this for a very long time and through tens of thousands of deaths of young men. And it was in a war that the U.S. eventually lost. Our servicemen at the end were instructed not to wear their uniforms on the way home.

A second point to be made is that consuming alcohol, whether to excess or not, is no way any kind of privilege. Did society at the time really think this was some sort of welcome into the adult world? Well I guess that was the premise, so deluded we were.

The men who survived WWII came home with degrees of PTSD and for them, various vices like drinking and smoking probably seemed therapeutic. We have heard about how cigarette manufacturers provided "smokes" gratis to troops. Helped with morale? A means of getting countless people hooked? Smoking and drinking have never had any actual benefits for anyone.

We could excuse the WWII vets for a lot. We could look the other way as they found diversions with foolishness. But such behavior should never have been viewed as example-setting.

The era of drunk humor and "outlaw country music" coincided roughly with the Jimmy Carter administration. I do not choose to find any fault with Carter himself. He might have given us a national health care system were it not for obstruction from Ted Kennedy.

Carter might have shown affinity for "outlaw music" but really he projected puritanical values. Music? It's just window dressing in our lives. "Outlaw country" had a populist bent, always useful for politicians. How blessed we were to have Carter who was a virtuous national symbol. He projected an air of compassion and doing good, at all times.

And look at what we have now in 2026. I could try to assemble a whole list of descriptive words. You get my drift. It gets worse all the time as with the Obamas/apes imagery. Now, don't tell me you didn't catch that in the news. It really was a big story. You might want to deny seeing it.

This is the disgrace us Americans have to live with right now. There appears to be no hope for Congress to remedy it. There is no hope for Congress. Just look at the embarrassment of our own congressperson Michelle Fischbach. A total mouthpiece for what Trump represents. Look at Kevin Kramer in North Dakota, the same deal.

John Thune

And the Senate majority leader is John Thune of South Dakota. I am quite certain that Thune in his own private thoughts isn't that far from yours truly in terms of how he sizes up Trump. I sense he's a good person who is most comfortable as a Chamber of Commerce Republican. A guy who is like a broken record saying tax cuts bring economic growth. I can at least respect that kind of Republican even while disagreeing with them in fundamental ways. I do believe their heart is in the right place.

But to try to look the other way on the "Obama/apes" imagery? That is quite a different matter. I write in my current "Morris of Course" blog post that I'd really prefer not rising to face the American flag just before UMM basketball games, so disgusted I am with our president and his Obama/apes thing. Really I'm disgusted with America as a whole for not rising up to demand immediate impeachment.

But I rise for the flag anyway in the spirit of "going with the flow."

Here is the link to my "Morris of Course" post which has the heading: "UMN-Morris sports continues its long odyssey."

https://morrisofcourse.blogspot.com/2026/02/umn-morris-sports-continues-its-long.html

During the Vietnam war I was not just "going with the flow." Incidentally I heard Moe Bandy and Joe Stampley live in Nashville TN in 1984. Were they serious or tongue-in-cheek? I frankly think they were serious. A little misogyny included too.