Superdome Becomes Fortress for Sugar Bowl

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

NEW ORLEANS - When the Bowl Championship Series title game was played in New Orleans in 2000, fans without tickets could get close enough to the Louisiana Superdome to peek past the turnstiles to see a bit of the crowd and even hear the cheers.

Not this time.

With LSU facing Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl on Sunday, officials expect plenty of people without tickets to be hanging around downtown _ official estimates have been as high as 100,000.

Those without tickets will barely get within 50 yards of the stadium doors. In fact, the fencing surrounding the complex gets no closer than 40 yards.

In the week leading up to the game, security officials have been creating a "fortress Superdome" environment, much as they have for several other major events since the Sept. 11, 2001. The dome hosted the first Super Bowl after the terrorist attacks and staged last season's NCAA Final Four just after war broke out in Iraq.

More: http://www.portervillerecorder.com/articles/2004/01/01/ap/Sports/d7vq78400.txt

[Mika]

1. Beyond Thunderdome?

-- Bush's America --

[Voltaire99]

2. Not merely for "security." To cow the public into obedience.

I believe Mailer has said it best:

"The dire prospect that opens, therefore, is that America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will have more and more importance in our lives. It will be an ever greater and greater overlay on the American system. And before it is all over democracy, noble and delicate as it is, may give way. My long experience with human nature - I'm 80 years old now - suggests that it is possible that fascism, not democracy, is the natural state."

"Indeed, democracy is the special condition - a condition we will be called upon to defend in the coming years. That will be enormously difficult because the combination of the corporation, the military and the complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator sports has set up a pre-fascist atmosphere in America already."

Norman Mailer, 2003

Link:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/02/27/1046064162690.html

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

3. Well said. You and Norman are living up to your namesake.

The outcome of the grand experiment of the neocons could easily go that way... A corporate democracy which is IMHO, a fascist state.

[daleo]

4. If you didn't know what these objects/events were

The headline would read kind of funny.