Bernstein: Bears Are Wasting Our Time
By Dan Bernstein--
CBSChicago.com senior columnist
(CBS) Those not compelled to watch the Bears by either professional responsibility, habitual inertia or abject masochism are afforded the luxury of disengagement.
There are so many better things to do than bear witness to whatever is going on out there in the second year of the Ryan Pace/John Fox regime that to begin to list and rank them would be nearly impossible. But after another abysmal Bears performance in a 31-17 loss to the Cowboys on Sunday night, we can try.
Such things currently more enjoyable, worthwhile and productive than watching the 2016 Bears now include but are not limited to:
– Listening to either Arcade Fire or Radiohead for three hours.
– Pulling out whatever is clogging the shower drain in the kids' bathroom and forgetting to figure out what you planned to do with it before it's in your hand and dripping down your arm.
– Overhearing health-club meatheads arguing about their fantasy teams while they mix protein drinks in the stupid plastic shaker-bottles they bring with them.
– Getting totally busted again by a Chicago speed camera and then waiting for the red envelope to arrive.
– Discussing the future of the White Sox and their ongoing attendance problems.
– Opening Twitter or reading email at any point in 2016 to find out that somebody else has died, either tragically so or leaving a significant cultural or artistic void in a way that reminds us of the unfairness and impermanence of human existence, and it makes us realize the truth of our own mortality. All while our wife was telling us something we weren't really listening to, and now she's mad. Something about us being out of San Pellegrino.
– Having a flex-sigmoidoscopy after you opted for no drugs or sedation because you had to get immediately to work when it was over. Trust me – it's better.
– Talking at a family gathering with an elderly relative who thinks you are your dad and keeps calling you by his name while you just nod and smile vacantly.
– Completing mandatory corporate tutorials about things that have nothing whatsoever to do with your actual job, especially when the program won't let you skip ahead to the quiz at the end.
– Standing in the weird, smelly bathroom line at the back of a turbulent 737 and getting your turn only after the sweaty, wheezing guy has finally figured out how to unlock that apparently complicated door.
– Playing Candyland with a toddler who can't get enough of it and not being smart enough to either stack the deck or stealthily remove the critical cards that could make for an endless and soul-sucking game.
– Eating dinner with those friends obsessed with the ingredients in all their food, and only because of a couple of horribly written and unscientific books.
– Waiting on hold with an Internet provider after entering your account number three different times and selecting eight menu options, only to finally reach a person who has no access to anything you did and makes you start from the beginning, again, then asks if you've thought to unplug the modem.
– Watching TV news networks use false equivalencies to normalize open racism in our political discourse while failing to challenge Orwellian inversions of the truth that drag us closer to our willing subservience to a psychotic, aspiring despot. Knowing there's no going back from an utter capitulation by the electorate to unchallenged and outright lying from what is just the first of many dangerous demagogues to follow.
– Lying awake at night contemplating the stark, imminent reality of the previous, as feeling the commensurate stomach acid and rising blood pressure as we wonder what kind of world our children are poised to inherit. Terrified of apocalyptic possibilities, watching the bedside clock tick toward something unthinkable.
They're all still so much better than these Bears.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's "Boers and Bernstein Show" in afternoon drive. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_bernstein and read more of his columns here.
