Nike, High Art, Mozart, and Harrogate

Oh Readers, the greatest Month of the whole American Year, March, is coming and coming fast.

Soon that maverick intellectual, Harrogate, will be inundating himself and--by extension--The Rhetorical Situation with a prolifera of all things college basketball. The coming tournaments, first the conferences and then the Big Dance--aka the Clearing at the End of the Path--are American spectacles that occupy a level unto themselves. Funny how sitting in front of a television four weekends in a row can give rise to the full spectrum of human emotions. But wait! Harrogate reveals too much, too soon. The regular season is still upon us. Let us organically grow into the moment, for in due time there will surely be, as they say, great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Or something like that.

For now, check out these commercials. The first, a recent classic, maybe the Greatest Shoe commercial ever. It has all the trappings of celebrating the human spirit in the mode of Dionysian Antiquity while at the same time very much participating in the postmodern Appolonian capitalist orgy that is today. It features the proud father Michael Jordan at the end. Jordan's smile may be the single most pleasant to behold, and of course the most lucrative, in the history of American sport. This first commercial knows how to bank on it, baby!

And then, second, Harrogate offers the awesome Nike commercial currently running. The Mozart does its job very nicely. The Goth emotions of it all, the defiance of the heroic Road Warrior who has come to take our candy and eat it right in front of us, the communitarian ethos on the line in this commercial will be palpable even to the most basketball-indifferent of spectators.