Do Bubba With the Bills

By Gerald Caplan and James Laxer

(This article was originally written in 1999)

Invariably the question from friends implies scepticism: So how did it happen that two certified Canadian pinko intellectuals ended up at a recent Buffalo Bill’s game in the company of 60 of western New York’s finest? As if we had betrayed, somehow, the "Pro Sports As Post-Modern Capitalism" analysis of the left. As if we were condoning by our very presence the diabolical Bagels and Circuses that alone allow Amerika to postpone the inevitable uprising by its oppressed masses.

Give us a break, eh? This dynamic duo has paid its bleeding hearts dues big time. Weren’t we witnesses at the execution of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas’ notorious slaughter chamber? Hadn’t we driven to the Socialist Scholars’ Conference in Manhattan in a mid-winter storm? What was left to experience, then, but the world of Middle America that will make G.W. Bush the next president of the United States? And where can you learn more about all those Bubbas than at a fall Sunday NFL football tribal ritual?

Well, sports fans, we did the whole 9 yards, from lunch a la tailgate to supper at the renowned Anchor Bar, home of "the best chicken wings in the world," in typical Yanqui understatement. And sandwiched between them, our hero Doug Flutie, though to tell the truth he’s so tiny we never actually spotted him. But hey! If you haven’t joined thousands of other guys and their beloved Durangos in a stadium parking lot on a frigid Sunday afternoon in a Buffalo burb, heating up some dogs on the portable gas stove and chug-a lugging a case of brewskis, you haven’t lived.

As for us, with numbed fingers we broiled boneless marinated chicken breasts, drank chardonnay and dreamed of homey bistros.

Our fellow tailgaters and Bills-watchers formed a veritable cross section of American society: 90% male, maybe 97% white. Every one of the cops and troopers whom we discovered occupying the dozen rows directly in front of us were white and male. Seventy percent of the players are black.

The fuzz had come by bus from across western New York, the beauty of not having driven—them being role models and all---allowing them to drink themselves from silly to ugly. You could follow the trajectory of their boozing in their attitude towards the cheerleaders, the beauteous (and overwhelmingly white) Buffalo Jills. The Jills, like all other cheerleaders from time immemorial, were completely dissociated from the game itself. They danced and cheered throughout the day, oblivious to the action on the field.

During the 1st quarter, they cops waved to them with genuine friendliness and just a soupcon of flirtatiousness. By the 2nd, our pals were suggesting the girls might consider revealing their upper bodies to the assembled throng. After half time, as the Wild Turkey continued to flow, the Serve and Protect gang had taken a quantum leap backwards, and it wasn’t a stretch to wonder how safe the Jills really were from the long molesting arm of the law.

That’s about when we called it a game. We’d already missed a 75-yard touchdown run when our view was obscured by a huge cop who’d been hurled by his buds into the row of troopers directly in front of us. But hey, were we about to complain? Not to them, Comrade. Anyways, by this time, maybe 4 or 5 scuffles had broken out in the stands around us and guards were everywhere hauling out over-exuberant fans. Dorothy, we weren’t in Skydome any more. It was time for prudent Canucks to vamoose, but there was no easy escape from the macho fun. On the way out, one of our fleeing group got creamed by a drunk who was wrestling with a security guard.

So suicidally hot Buffalo wings at the Anchor Bar were accompanied by concern for our comrade, injured in the line of duty, and nostalgia for an experience that, with luck, will prove to be once-in-a-lifetime. Who can ever forget the banner pulled by an overhead plane: "Buffalo Gun Centre—Go Bills!". Or especially our new friends, the upstate cops, and the nude female dummy floating through the stands that they lusted after so touchingly. By the way, we should report to fellow lefties, since the Bills won the Jills were probably safe from the cops for at least another week.

Gerrybob Caplan and Jimbo Laxer also pursue academic and political interests.