The following is the latest from E. Wolf who is a hater of many things — the Seattle Seahawks, San Francisco 49ers and, of course, the Minnesota Vikings. He also a lover of the Green Bay Packers.
With back-to-back, heart-tugging injuries to Randall Cobb and Jermichael Finley, sometimes we Packers fans lose sight of what is really important. Beyond these gut-wrenching injuries, there are growing concerns over the inordinate number of injuries our team has suffered, including marquee players like Claw Matthews, Morgan Burnett, Casey Hayward, James Jones, the list goes on (and on). Compound this with an inconsistent offense that has at times stalled, and we Packers fans have had much to fret about this season.
Those concerns are of utmost importance, on a lot of levels, including how all this adversity affects our prospects for winning another Lombardi Trophy this year. This week though, it is time to return to a matter the importance of which cannot be stated strongly enough — our bitter rivalry with the hated Minnesota Vikings. As our Packers travel west this coming weekend to take down a certain purple clad team in the humpty dump Metrodome, I am writing to all Packers fans throughout the land an important message we should ALL preach: a message of hatred and intolerance – hatred and intolerance for the Minnesota Vikings!
While the Bears are certainly our greatest rival, the Vikings are our most hated. That team represents all that is soulless, wrong, and vile. When I contemplate the Chicago Bears, I feel a sense of dislike, but also a reluctant admiration, a grudging respect for a worthy rival, a team worthy of competing with the Packers. When I contemplate the Vikings however, I am sometimes overcome with white hot flashes of anger. You should be, too.
Don’t think so? Merely consider the lengthy laundry list of crimes and transgressions associated with that team — always formidable enough to anger and provoke, at times inflicting some sort of setback for us and gain for them, but never truly effectual enough to break the curse that renders them an unsung hopeless obsession, while reserving the hardware, the championships for Titletown. Green Bay 13, Minnesota Zer-0!
A series of outrageous comments by Greg Jennings are just the most recent irritant. Other incidents in this seemingly unending laundry list of outrages include — the ’98 Monday Night Football game, the infamous Randy Moss mooning, a pattern of usurping certain former Packers, including one whose treason almost put the Vikings in the Super Bowl and continues to divide Packerland even today. Then there are less Packers-centric outrages such as the Sex Boat scandal, leading the league in recruiting criminals and dirtbags, and having an unscrupulous, despicable owner whose shady dealings have landed him in some legal trouble of late, doubtlessly just the tip of the iceberg in a life of corruption and dubious, sharp business practices that we can only begin to imagine.
Whenever I see or hear anything – any word, image, or sound–related to the Minnesota Vikings, I feel as if I were coming down with the rage virus from 28 Days Later.
Except that in this instance it is ALL things Minnesota Viking’s that are the infected – the diseased. Unrelenting hatred, contempt and scorn for this disease that is the Minnesota Vikings is healthy, righteous and good, as undying love for the Packers is the cure! When I see someone wearing a Vikings jersey or anything else associated with that team, I feel my heartbeat rise, the adrenaline rush. Fight or flight, and I am not flying, at least not in that way. Indeed, I hate this team so much I wish the people of Minnesota told Zygi Wilf “no” on the Art Modell stadium shakedown, bringing about the disbanding of the Vikings, and replacing their existence with some new expansion team in L.A. in the NFC West, and shifting the Rams to the North. On the heels of Super Bowl XLV, the Packers could have claimed they helped KILL — permanently vanquish — this hated foe. DING DONG! The witch is dead! Who would not want that?
So as the week unfolds and this division matchup grows closer, take note of this important reminder! Love for our Packers is complemented and enhanced by hatred, even bloodlust for the Vikings and all who support them. See someone in Vikings garb, particularly on game-day? Give him a sharp eye or demonstrate other hostile body language signifying how unwelcome and disliked his company is. If no one is looking, I cannot condemn throwing a half empty beverage cup, or worse, at him. Have a coworker who is a Vikings fan? Just keep professional and only minimally civil, limiting discourse to business related matters only. When that person enters the break room to chit-chat, excuse yourself at once, leaving only the sting of the dreaded silent treatment. If you have the power to get that person fired or demoted, or at the very least away from you, I say, why not? Dating a hot or maybe not-so-hot girl (or god forbid married to a woman) who is a Vikings fan? Shame on you! Not all romances are perfect, but certain character flaws should always give rise to hard questions. On this, the mascot for the Boston Bruins offers a pretty important lesson of his own that we should all follow:
It has been a long and trying season already, and we are only into week seven. Now as we anticipate a satisfying beat-down of those scumbags on their own turf, let us all take to heart this important message of hatred and intolerance for all things related to the Minnesota Vikings! Because love and hate are really part of the same thing (passion), this could be just as important as the love and devotion we all feel for our Green Bay Packers. Indeed, perhaps the annual pair of games against this enemy (not rival, enemy) ought to bring about yet another tradition in Packerland: Hate Week, in which all Packers fans revel in their hatred, contempt and disgust for this abomination. WE HATE THE MINNESOTA VIKINGS. It just goes hand in hand, like two sides of a coin. GO PACK! DEATH, SICKNESS AND PLAGUE FOR THE VIKINGS!
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