Point of View: Steeling Myself

The media had it all wrong. Don’t tell me the Steelers didn’t win that A.F.C. championship game with the Patriots. It just goes to show you to what lengths the lackeys of the press will go to distort the truth. 

While they may have their facts, I have my alternative facts, far more persuasive if you’d just hear me out. It all began when a Belichick operative set off the fire alarm early that Sunday morning in the hotel the Steelers were staying at, prompting them to jump out of their beds, risking injury. No wonder Le’Veon Bell had to come out of the game early with a groin pull.

I was jolted out of my bed once, and it can be very disconcerting. We were in a fleabag hotel on the Left Bank, and the clerk told us after we’d all trooped down the narrow staircase in our robes and whatnot that the good news was there was no fire and that the bad news was there were still three hours until breakfast. That’s the French for you. Patriot fans too for that matter. Very smug. 

And did you read that the Steelers’ coaches’ headsets were jammed throughout the game with Trump’s inaugural speech? No, no, I’m sure you didn’t.

I can’t tell you to what lengths Belichick and his apparatchiks will go.

Of course I didn’t watch the game. (Well, that’s an alternative fact if truth be told.) I was not about to be snookered by the media so easily. Instead, I drank margaritas and read about Odysseus’ return — posing as a vagabond, biding his time, and brimming with alternative facts — to Ithaca, where Penelope’s suitors were (like the Patriots) banqueting in his hall and lording it over everyone. 

So today, as dawn’s rosy fingers parted me from honeyed sleep, I refused to credit the verdict of my own eyes when I picked up the paper. 

“Such scores simply do not exist,” I said to Mary. “I’ll have my coffee now.” 

Later, with loins girded in Terrible Towels, I offered up a burnt offering of 10 pounds of chip chop ham to Hephaestus.