SUPER BOWL XXIII: CINCINNATI BENGALS vs. SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS : Commentary : This Is the Time to Get Our Priorities Straight

MIAMI — They’re running a reality check in Fantasyland.

It’s time to look in the mirror, America. Are you sure you know where your soul is?

The local riots have cast a shadow over Super Bowl XXIII that won’t go away. What are you going to say: “All that’s left is sporadic violence; pass me one of those deviled eggs with the caviar on top.”?

Dismay is written on the faces of the local organizers. Miami did everything Los Angeles did and Seoul did. It built the hotels, scheduled the parties, put up replicas of 28 team helmets on the light poles on I-95, the route to Joe Robbie Stadium.

The suites and luxury boxes were readied, the yachts and limos assembled. The caterers designed their pavilions for the corporations’ game-day brunches outside the stadium, with potted palms, giant TVs, big-name rock bands and buffets with pate de foie gras and vintage wines.

The stars descended: eight astronauts, John Cougar Mellencamp, the Bangles, Maureen Reagan, Burt Reynolds, Willie Nelson, Maria Conchita Alonso, Julio Iglesias, Linda Ronstadt, Robin Williams, Billy Joel, Christie Brinkley, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello.

The powerful brokered: The Miami Herald reported that Sen. Edward Kennedy got 10 rooms for valued contributors at the booked-to-capacity-for-this-weekend-since-the-dawn-of-time Sonesta Beach Hotel on Key Biscayne by calling Alan Fein, a Miami lawyer and Democratic Party activist, who in turn called Steve Sonnabend, whose family manages the hotel.

The league, adroit as any Los Angeles agency at public relations and aware that unfettered hedonism, though the order of the day, doesn’t really play, took pains to demonstrate it has a social conscience, too.

It made a charitable grant . . . and put out a release to advertise the fact:

“MIAMI--The National Football League will award $5,000 educational grants to two deserving South Florida black high school seniors this spring, NFL Director of Equal Employment David Cornwell announced today. . . .

“ ‘Commissioner (Pete) Rozelle and the NFL owners want to make sure that there are direct benefits to the local minority community from the Miami area’s hosting of Super Bowl XXIII,’ said Cornwell.”

Anheuser Busch, whipping up the froth for its commercials, flew in Spuds McKenzie and the Spudettes, passed out “Bud Bowl I” baseball caps and threw a party where you could meet Bob Costas and Paul Maguire and have your picture taken with the famous pooch.

How big is the Super Bowl? Companies advertise their advertisements.

Anheuser Busch is happy to tell you it paid $1 million to shoot the spots, $4 million for the commercial time and an amount it doesn’t want to disclose to promote the project.

There were the usual tales of let-them-eat-cake ribaldry. A dentist in Hollywood, Fla., offered a ticket and use of his car and condo for $15,000 as a joke . . . and got takers . . . and got on TV.

All this is standard Super Bowl fare, phenomena that have been noted for years and smiled at.

Did they suggest a skewing of societal priorities?

Well, maybe, but no one ever really seemed to mind.

Is there something we’re missing? There are a lot of people who aren’t invited, who are poor and getting poorer.

From the Cincinnati Bengals’ hotel, Eddie Brown could have watched his old neighborhood burn. Brown, who could run a 4.4-second 40 and catch passes, was upwardly mobile and moved out.

An entire black middle class has emerged . . . and moved out of the ghettos, leaving what is known as the permanent underclass with little hope and no role models.

The plight of poor blacks in Miami is aggravated by peculiar local factors: the successive waves of immigration from Central America; the psychic wound of seeing the Cubans rise to civic power; the tendency of Hispanic employers to hire Hispanics; the strain caused by competing demands on already-limited social services. Super Bowl XXIII didn’t cause these riots; this was the fourth time in the 1980s that Overtown or Liberty City or both have gone up.

In all fairness, when the riots hit, NFL officials did manifest concern.

Of course, most of the concern they expressed was for their pretty game.

Said Rozelle Tuesday: “I feel for (the Miami organizers). The one big plus is that it’s early in the week.”

One big plus?

There was the difficulty in the media of discerning the different levels of importance.

From USA Today:

“MIAMI--When he arrived . . . NBC’s Merlin Olsen sensed a pall--and it wasn’t just the sad reports of the nearby riots. Few were talking about the game. You know, Cincinnati vs. San Francisco in Sunday’s Super Bowl on NBC (5:18, EST, kickoff).

“ ‘The only time I can remember sensing this kind of unanimous appraisal of the outcome was Super Bowl XV in New Orleans--the Raiders and (Philadelphia) Eagles,’ (Olsen said.)”

NBC meanwhile, was in the process of deciding whether the riots were part of this story.

At a news conference Wednesday, Michael Weisman, head of the sports division, said that he would include a segment on the riots in the 2-hour pregame show, “if it impacts on the Super Bowl . . . right now, it’s not.”

This week was to mark Miami’s new vibrancy. It was once the salvation of this game, giving the NFL its first sellout after Super Bowl I in Los Angeles played before 30,000 empty seats in the Coliseum.

The league was so grateful, it returned twice in the next 3 years. But it grew tired of the cramped Orange Bowl and the hotels raising prices over even the normally usurious winter rates, and it hadn’t brought the game here since 1979.

Miami was only playing the party game that has worked so well for everyone else--throw a big bash, wine and dine the VIPs, shoot off some fireworks and let the world know there’s a new deal.

Unfortunately, some citizens for whom the same old deal prevailed were aroused Monday night by the sight of a policeman shooting an unarmed motorcyclist, who was being pursued by another officer for nothing more than a speeding violation. On such acts is history borne and on such reactions are our consciences tweaked.

And if they are, that’s the one big plus.