Politickles

The Saints will never be in it.

That’s my prediction.

I don’t even watch the Superbowl. Haven’t for years. Used to tune in for the last two minutes — when most of the action, if there is any, generally happens — but don’t even do that anymore. Most of the time, I don’t even know who’s playing. When I do bother to find out, it’s often teams I’ve never heard of. Ravens, Titans, Panthers — who the hell are they?

When people ask me why I don’t follow professional football, I have a ready answer: “I’m from New Orleans.” Translation: I’ve seen the Saints snatch defeat from the jaws of victory too many times.

When I was a teenager, a friend of mine’s family had season tickets for the Saints and I often got invited along. That was way back when, when they still played in Tulane Stadium (home of the Sugar Bowl at the time). The only exciting thing that ever happened was when Tom Dempsey kicked a 63-yard field goal at the very end of a game, giving the Saints an undeserved victory over the Detroit Lions. My friend and I were already on the exit ramps, ogling women, and missed the whole thing.

Twenty years later, a girlfriend invited me to a game in the Superdome, and I reluctantly accepted. The Saints scored a touchdown just before the two-minute warning and were up by 14. At that point, I turned to her and said: “They’re going to lose.” Sure enough, the opposing team returned the kickoff for a touchdown. They recovered an onside kick and scored again. Then, they intercepted a pass or recovered a fumble and kicked a field goal, scoring 17 points in two minutes and winning by three. Unbelievable, and inevitable. Diehard fans are one thing, but anyone who will put up with that kind of crap year after year is certifiably insane.

Who dat say they gonna beat them Saints? Well, just about everybody.

Anyone want to buy my Monty Stickles autograph?

Brad Zinn is one of the nicest guys I’ve never met. He’s also a terrific impressionist whose one-man tribute to the great comedians of the golden age of television — Benny, Burns, Skelton, et al. — can send an audience into nostalgia overdose.

Brad has been on the Politickles email list for 10 years or more; I’m not sure how he got there, but I’m glad to have him. I, in turn, have been on his Great Comedians email list for just as long, receiving regular updates on my favorite jokesters from the 50s and 60s. Had he not gone into show biz, Brad would have made an excellent funeral director: his notices about the passing of a beloved star provide such tender consolation in the hour of need.

One of my big hopes in life is to someday be somewhere where Brad is performing, so I can see all my favorite comedians impersonated in person. Better yet, if I’m ever flush again, I’ll hire him to perform at a special event of my own.

American political science has not produced very many great ideas. . . . However, there has been one American political scientist who did produce great ideas, and even a succession of them. He was also very conscious that ideas have consequences, and some of his own ideas had consequences that are still reverberating around the world today. That political scientist was Samuel P. Huntington . . . — James Kurth, Foreign Policy Research Institute

The Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) is one of the best think tanks in America. Its free weekly emails are consistently enlightening and provocative.

When Evann went out of town for a couple of days to visit her mother in New Orleans, everything fell apart.

In no particular order: editor, chef, adman, agitator, bon vivant, poet

See if you can identify which is which, and choose your favorite.

Come in from the cold and enjoy the warm atmosphere at another Catholic Carnival, featuring my open letter to President Obama and other provocative posts.

The symbolic value of Barack Obama’s election is hard to overstate, and the jubilation of black Americans well warranted. But, being the first this or that can be a millstone as well as a milestone, and jubilation turn to disgust and disgrace.

Remember the “first Catholic president”? American papists were ecstatic at the election of John F. Kennedy, but Camelot came apart, and rather quickly. The first Catholic president turned out to be a whore-mongering, double-dealing, feckless idiot, a Catholic in name only, and an everlasting embarrassment to members of the faith he professed.

I’ve overcome the disgrace by disavowing JFK. To my mind, Ronald Reagan was the first Catholic president, in practice if not in name. Black Americans may want to recalculate their pioneer, too, if Obama disappoints in like fashion.

How is Jesus different from Buddha, Confucius, and Mohammed? Was Jesus just a good man, or was He God? How do we know that Jesus started a church? Is it possible to find that Church today? How can Mary be called the Mother of God? Is Jesus really present in the Holy Eucharist? Why do Catholics have a cross with Jesus’ body on it? Who was responsible for the death of Jesus? Can we prove that Jesus rose from the dead? Is Jesus one way to Heaven, or is He the only way? — James J. Drummey

Jim Drummey was the senior writer at The New American when I was editor in the late 1980s. He was the one indispensable member of the staff: lucid, meticulous, reliable, and fast. Jim subseqently left the magazine to become a full-time Catholic apologist and publisher. His books include two collections of the popular question-and-answer column he supplies to diocesan papers and a five-volume catechetical series for high schoolers. We have used these books with our own children and recommend them highly. Jim’s latest book is “Who Do You Say That I Am?” It offers 120 questions and answers about Jesus Christ and will be a great tool for defenders of the faith in the years ahead.

A controversial new biopic about Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara is awakening old passions and provoking vigorous defenses and denunciations of the iconic revolutionary . . . — Washington Times

A mass murderer is a mass murderer — but, if he calls himself a revolutionary, he becomes a darling of the Left. What possesses a person to glorify a heartless, murdering bastard like Che? Is there anyone stupider than an “intellectual”?

Picked up some work the other day. A guy who’s written a techno-thriller happened to spot, on an online writing site, the resume I’d posted there eight years ago! First inquiry in all that time. A real lesson in patience. I’m editing the manuscript for him, and having some interesting conversations with him about the process. He’s asked about point of view, double-spacing after periods, how to handle a character’s thoughts as opposed to his spoken words, the use of obscenities, the value of an editor, etc. My responses:

Point of view
You can tell the story from multiple perspectives, but you have to do it well or it will be confusing/irritating to the reader. You can also use the third-person omniscient throughout, but then you lose the personal touch that a character-narrator provides. If one of the characters can tell the whole story, that might be best, but you will have to explain how that character is able to recount portions of the story in which he was not personally involved. This could be easily resolved in the case of a character like O–, who, as a reporter, could plausibly have compiled other portions through interviews, research, etc.

Period piece
My dad was with the occupation troops in Japan. If not for the dropping of the A-bombs, he’d have been with the invasion troops and almost certainly would have been killed — and I wouldn’t be here. Nor would I have inherited the old manual typewriter he carried with him throughout the war as a correspondent for the Corps. One of the toughest habits I ever had to break was double-spacing after periods, which became obsolete with the advent of personal computers, which are, essentially, typesetting machines (with automatic kerning). Adding an extra space after a period on a PC throws the kerning off and makes a mess of things.

Thoughts vs. quotes
An inner monologue is not really a quote and does not require quotation marks. You could treat it as though it were, and I imagine lots of people do, but I prefer to distinguish between the two. The goofy thing about questions is that they end in question marks, for which commas can’t really substitute — as they do in declarative sentences that are quotes or internal thoughts. This has always disturbed me, but putting a comma after the question mark — which I’ve seen people do (How crazy is that?, he wondered) — is even more disconcerting.

Obscenity
Lots of best sellers are full of obscenities; lots aren’t. Do obscenities help or hurt a book’s sale? I have no idea. The question I ask myself is, Are they necessary? In real life, there are occasions when nothing but a four-letter word will do — and many more occasions when they’re simply gratuitous. The problem with a book, or a movie, is that it’s a concentrated slice of life — and all the pieces, including the obscenities, are, in effect, magnified. Also, overuse undermines their impact.

(I’m not a big fan of Steven Spielberg, but I have to admit that ET would be an undeniable film classic, except for one thing: the scene when Elliot’s older brother calls him “P– Breath.” Where did that come from? It’s the only thing like that in the whole movie. Did it add anything? I don’t see how. Did it subtract? I think so. What was the point?)

Who needs an editor?
Does an author even need an editor before submitting his manuscript to a publisher? If he wants to produce the best manuscript he can, as a matter of pride, then hiring an editor makes sense. But, if he just wants to get a book published and make some money, an editor’s services are probably unnecessary. (This assumes, of course, that the author is not completely incompetent, in which case no editor could help him anyway.)

Fortunately, my client has high standards and and has decided to continue with our arrangement. His writing is very clean. Mostly what I’m doing is substituting active for passive constructions, eliminating deadwood, inserting a better word when I can, and making sure that he shows rather than tells. But the American reader, nowadays, is not very demanding — and, judging from the books that get published, the editors at most of the fiction houses aren’t either. All they want is a big story, well-written or not.