On Friday, my wife and I walked from our house near downtown
Indianapolis to the Super Bowl village. The game was more than a week away, but
the whole area was already crowded. It appeared that every pavilion and tent
within 500 miles was either already set up or currently being assembled in the
streets and parking lots of downtown Indianapolis.
There are giant Super Bowl sculptures, at least three
stages, 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 a
shot of Monument Circle:
As I walked around this temporary amusement park, I got more
and 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 signs
are actually
homeless or hungry. And giving money to panhandlers only exacerbates the
problem. But the dichotomy between the glittering temporary bars and stages for
Super Bowl XLVI and the panhandlers points up a real problem in our society—one
that calls The Hunger Games to my
mind.
Are the fashionable spectacles of the Super Bowl Village really
that different from the glitz and glamor of the Capitol District? And while we
don’t have any place labeled District 12, you could easily form one among the
population of Indianapolis. Consider this:
167,000
residents of Indianapolis live below the federal poverty line
63,000 of
them are children
34,000
residents will go hungry at some point this year.
3,000 will
be homeless at some point this year.
About 50 homeless
people in Indianapolis will die of exposure this winter.
And consider
these stats:
Lucas Oil Stadium cost $750,000,000, of which $650,000,000 was public tax money.
The Super
Bowl 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’t
kill 23 kids per year for our entertainment. Football only kills about four people each year, making it a relatively safe sport (gymnastics, cheerleading, and
downhill skiing are far more dangerous.) But as I walked through the Super Bowl
Village on Friday, I had the feeling that I was bearing witness to an
inevitable slide—America becoming Panem.
What do you
think? Please convince me I’m wrong in the comments. I’m getting depressed all
over again.
