I’m frequently asked by people, especially during the fall and winter months, if I like football. I usually answer back with something like “Yeah, it’s alright.” What I would really like to say is “No, I don’t like football. I’m a Detroit Lions fan.” Unfortunately, I was born in Detroit — definitely the wrong place for my avatar to have incarnated. But since Lions fans are the most loyal fans in any sport anywhere in the world, my Lions pride has stuck with me, even when I moved to places with much better football teams — Indiana (home of the Indianapolis Colts) and later to North Carolina (home of the Carolina Panthers). I don’t know if it could accurately be called Lions Pride if you go 0-16 on the season and are the only current NFL franchise to never go to the Superbowl. Whatever it is, I have it.

Since I’m vastly more interested in politics and business than football, it’s entertaining to see the lambasting of the Lions cross-over into those genres. In the opening days of the President Obama administration, it was announced that Obama signed an executive order to disband the Lions. Another commentator used the Lions to describe how the Government Accountability Office describes “high risk” federal programs.

But being a Lions fan is a unique experience in the sports world. The start of every season, no matter how bad the previous season was, is filled with hope that we’ll make a big turnaround and get to the big game. And we have the joy of being really pissed off at our ownership team management, knowing there’s no chance that totally new people with new ideas will be brought in. The conspiracy-oriented side of me thinks that Ford declined to take bailout money in order to keep from getting rid of the Lions.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of draft picks or personnel beyond what I mentioned already. As I said, I don’t like football, but on the bright side, I’ll have something to watch Lions-wise next season since a single win (or even a tie) would be an improvement. I mean, they couldn’t go winless again next season too. Could they?

This afternoon was filled with the completion of a lot of around the Triangle tasks. I started the day with some work on my television show at Raleigh Television Network in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. After finishing up there, I drove to the Wal-Mart in nearby Cary to pick up some supplies. All this running around (without having had breakfast) made me really hungry. I decided to kill another bird that I’ve wanted to throw some stones at for awhile and stop by Burger King to try out their Angry Whopper. As a connisseur of all things spicy, I was hoping for a challenge. Their commercial totally had me hooked:

The first time I saw the commercial with someone, we had this debate about the commercial itself. Most of the commentary centered around the idea of calling a hamburger “angry.” I suppose that’s a valid point. Who wants to spend a long day at work, shopping or watching the kids and top it off with something angry. That hamburger could be the catalyst that will get someone arrested, and it would be a lot more plausible than the Twinkie Defense. I took offense at the browbeating farmer aspect. That’s also not a positive message to put into customer’s heads. Burger King’s marketing and advertising department is either non-existant, geniuses or off their medication.

I ended up eating two Angry Whoppers. It was a pretty good burger with cheese, onion rings, onions, hot peppers and a slightly tangy BBQ-like sauce. The peppers were Jalepeno, except kind of sweet. It even had mayo and tomatoes. I hate mayo and tomatoes on burgers, but I ate them anyway because I was so hungry. But overall it was an overall good burger, although a little pricey for my taste as an everyday type of burger.

My biggest problem was that it was kind of sweet and western tasting, not really angry. I definitely wouldn’t have called it an Angry Whopper. I would have went with a name that sounded a bit more frustrated and inhibited. It kind of reminded me of the stories my gay friends would tell me about the time between when they realized they were gay and when they told someone for the first time. Maybe it should have been called something like the “In The Closet Burger.” They could have even kept the same commercial, with the guy throwing spicy vegetables at him a metaphor about how parents can have a hard time with these sort of things. The peppers, onion rings and sauce definitely give it a Brokeback Mountain type of feel. This burger almost made me want to put on a cowboy hat. That is, almost… Other than that, it was a pretty good burger.

Today I was flipping through the channels when I came upon Lou Dobbs’ show on CNN. He was talking about Hillary Clinton’s replacement in the U.S. Senate, current U.S. Representative Kirsten Gillibrand. While I don’t have a lot of confidence in politicians in general, a glimmer of optimism hit me when Dobbs was debating why she was picked, saying she scored high ratings from both the ACLU and the NRA. Wow! My mind raced as I thought how great things might be from now on if a libertarian Democratic was  appointed to the U.S. Senate instead of the ultra-liberals that could have gotten the nod.

As a pro-gun civil libertarian myself, I know what a tight rope it is to be down with both the ACLU and the NRA crowds. There are very few situations where both groups overlap, but you might be surprised. As a candidate for political office, I would probably only be able to garner an 80 to 90% rating from each group, since I don’t recite the party line upon request. I especially don’t fall in line when major philosophical consistencies occur, as both groups sometimes have happen. The ACLU folks that I’ve met are all into “group rights” as opposed to individual rights. Technically speaking, only individuals can have rights. The gun rights people I’ve met tend to hate the ACLU, in general, and specifically because they too often misinterpret the Second Amendment as applying only to soldiers. And the NRA isn’t really a no-compromise pro-gun organization anyway, unlike awesome national grassroots activist groups like Gun Owners of America or Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. But most likely I wouldn’t be able to get rated or even recognized as a candidate by these groups as I’m not a Demopublican or a Republicrat. Getting rated by such groups is often dependent upon a “major” political party affiliation. Nevertheless, some bastard child of the ACLU and NRA is how I would classify myself if forced into a ten-second soundbite description.

So I pulled up Kirsten Gillibrand’s entry on Wikipedia in order to get the real story. Right away, even though she is being made out by some pundits to be a really, really junior Senator, it’s clear she has more legal and policy experience than previously mentioned candidate, Caroline Kennedy. She’s a member of the Blue Dog Democrats, which is why she’s coming off a little more conservative than Clinton ever did. She still is a bit open about social issues, but doesn’t appear overly so. She opposed the bailout, but so did a lot of people who didn’t completely understand the most pressing reason to do so. Unfortunately, she is in favor of keeping young folks locked into a struggling social security system.

All-in-all, I’m slightly optimistic. All the media coverage regarding her seat and the speculation if she will be the next Hillary Clinton will make her career easy to follow. She better do some good, since we’ll all be watching.