Tom Brady, a football player

If you like to keep score, the weekend of January 21 and 22 was exciting. The New England Patriots defeated the Baltimore Ravens 23 to 20, the New York Giants defeated the San Francisco 49ers, 20 to 17, and Newt Gingrich defeated Mitt Romey, 40.4 to 27.8.

Eli Manning, another football player

The big difference between those hard-fought football games and our crappy political primary contests is that in a football game you’re not allowed to  bamboozle and lie your way to victory or use wild money from in-your-pocket millionaire contributors to ambush your opponents. On the football field, when you’re seen breaking the rules, you’re penalized by referees who are as objective as God permits humans to be. In politics, anything less than a felony

Mitt Romney, another politician

is considered OK, so long as it hauls in voters.

Newt Gingrich, yet another politician

One of the nice things about football is that the actual running, blocking, grunting players are the winners and losers,  depending on how well they do on the field. The spectators — that’s most of us — are on the sidelines, cheering. We get to go home in good health when it’s over.  In politics, the politicians play the game but we’re the ones who get banged up, mangled, disabled and sometimes ruined by what they do.

We’ve damn well exhausted this sports/politics metaphor. We apologize  and will leave it alone now.