After rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs during their comeback against Houston and then rooting for them in their comeback against the Titans, I changed my allegiance and rooted for the sort-of-hometown Niners. Still, all that earlier rooting had re-energized my long-dormant fanship for Kansas City that had started when, while living in Oakland as a Raider fan, I would always root for the AFL, and later the AFC, in the Superbowl. So, while I was disappointed the Niners lost, I’m OK with the Chiefs winning and, for most of it, it was a pretty good game.

What I want to talk about, is that I started to watch the Superbowl a little late because, among other things, I read that Trump was being interviewed by Sean Hannity just before the game. I figured it would really be a free ad for Trump2020 and I wanted to be sure to miss it. The Fox owners can give Trump a forum to say anything he or they want because they own the Network. They are the ones holding the mic and, in reality, that gives them the only voice in the room. It got me thinking that getting rid of Citizens-United is a fool’s errand. Anybody who owns a TV Network or a Newspaper could back anyone they wanted before the Supreme Court ruled that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment – according to the SCOTUS Blog – and the government may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections.

Before Citizens-United, Fox News could still shill for President Donald Trump and Chris Mattews could still say that Bernie Sanders was unfit to be President, but General Motors couldn’t because that was not their business. Sheldon Adelson’s main business is conning money from gamblers so one would think, before Citizens-United, he couldn’t engage in direct political speech but Adelson owns two daily newspapers, Israel Hayom and the Las Vegas Review-Journal so he can print anything he wants. So can Jeff Bezos with The Washington Post and so can Jim Hightower with The Hightower Lowdown.

We pretend that the rich and powerful were enabled by Citizens-United but I don’t think that was really the case and passing a new law re-outlawing corporate spending will not really change anything.