Race issues dog Allen

A group of former University of Virginia football teammates of U.S. Sen. George Allen alleges that the former quarterback regularly used the n-word to refer to African-Americans.

A second group of the Republican’s former teammates has stepped up to say that this is not true.

Meanwhile, the state’s leading political pundit - a former classmate of Allen - has put in his two cents worth, in favor of the first group.

It seems so long ago that the slur macaca first entered the Old Dominion political lexicon, doesn’t it?

“I don’t think any campaign, especially an incumbent’s campaign, wants to be dealing with allegations like these allegations. So just in general, in a nominal way, it isn’t good,” said Quentin Kidd, a political-science professor at Christopher Newport University.

The recent allegations referencing Allen’s activities as a student at UVa. in the early 1970s surfaced in a story published on the news Web site Salon.com on Monday. In the story, three former teammates of Allen, including Ken Shelton, a radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the Cavaliers at the time when Allen was the signal-caller, said Allen commonly used the n-word to describe African-Americans when he was among white friends.

“Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where ‘blacks knew their place.’ He used the n-word on a regular basis back then,” said Shelton, who also told Salon.com that Allen gave him the nickname “Wizard” because he shared the last name of Robert Shelton, a former imperial wizard of the United Klans of America.

The Allen campaign quickly put together a group of former UVa. teammates of Allen and Shelton who offered via a campaign-issued press release a vastly different perspective on the senator’s racial sentiments.

“I was on the University of Virginia football team with George Allen for the 1972 and 1973 seasons. During that time, I never heard George Allen use any racially disparaging word, nor did I ever witness or hear about him acting in a racially insensitive manner,” said Doug Jones, a defensive back at UVa. from 1971-1974 who roomed with Shelton as a second-year student - and is listed as the unit operations co-chair of the Allen campaign in Fairfax County on the Virginia Republican Party Web site.

Another former teammate quoted in the Monday release, Charles Hale, was appointed by Allen during his term as governor of Virginia to the Virginia Board of Mining Examiners. And the wife of a third teammate quoted in the release, Holly Korte, the wife of George Korte, was appointed by then-governor Allen to the Virginia Board of Social Services.

Allen himself addressed the allegations in a news conference in Richmond held after a Monday event in which the senator appeared with a group of African-American pastors to voice his support for a constitutional amendment on the state ballot in the fall banning same-sex marriage.

“Let me say this again very clearly so no one can misunderstand this. These allegations, and this story … are false. I don’t ever remember ever using that word. That word was not a part of my vocabulary, as was asserted in this article. It wasn’t then. It hasn’t been since then. And it is not now. It is not who I was, and is not who I am,” Allen told reporters.

On a Monday-evening appearance on the MSNBC politics show “Hardball,” UVa. political pundit Larry Sabato - a former classmate of Allen when both were undergrads at the university - disputed Allen’s claims to that effect.

“I can’t say how frequently he did it, but I don’t believe him when he denies never having done it,” Sabato told host Chris Matthews - and then, when Matthews pressed him as to how he knows this, he said later, “Well, I’m simply going to say that I’m going to stay with what I know is the case. And the fact is that he did use the n-word, whether he’s denying it now or not.”

To say that this is expected to be at least something in the way of damaging to the Allen campaign would be understating things by quite a bit.

“These kinds of questions, you just can’t win on. It’s like, you know, are you still beating your wife? Some of these things are very difficult - and when you try to explain them, it becomes too complicated for the public to kind of understand or get involved with the story,” said Bob Denton, a political-science professor at Virginia Tech.

“It gets him off-message, off-issues - and it makes (Democratic Party nominee and opponent Jim) Webb more viable, and cuts the campaign shorter. With each day that these issues are talked about, it reduces the amount of time to get refocused and rebound,” Denton said.

“It has impacted his credibility, his character - with this constant questioning about how sincere he is, is he a bully? So it really does define him in a way - because we know that likeability, oftentimes, trumps issues, especially for those who are really not sure one way or the other. Liking a candidate, feeling comfortable with them, is often more important than any issue,” Denton told The Augusta Free Press.

The fact that the story has had any legs at all has rankled more than a few Republicans - but Denton said it is not at all out of the ordinary to see the level of attention on a candidate’s personal life that led to the multiple national-media stories about race issues involving Allen, given Allen’s apparent ambition to test the presidential waters in 2008.

“I will say that seeing where this stuff is dripping, and seeing where it comes from, this is very much opposition research,” Denton said. “I’m not sure that George Allen realized that when your name is being mentioned in terms of the presidential nomination, they go back and just comb every bit of your existence. They’ll even pull your birth certificate and make sure who signed it. Today, these opposition-research people spend literally at the national level millions of dollars.

“This is more about ‘08 than the Senate race - and indeed may have taken him out of any consideration, if he happens to win here in Virginia in ‘06,” Denton said.

“What’s happening is there’s nothing like the glare of the presidential-level media on you,” Kidd told the AFP. “I don’t think state-level candidates know how intense the heat is of the national media until they run for president. Allen has had that intense heat of media attention turned on him earlier than he would have had it turned on him had he run for president because of his own mistake. That macaca statement caused the national media to focus on him earlier than they were intending to focus on him because they saw blood in the water. They were going to do this if he ran for president. He looked like he damaged himself early, so they smelled blood, and they’re going after him.”

Noticeably silent in all of this is Webb, who has declined requests to offer comment on the macaca story from last month and the allegations that have surfaced in recent days. This has raised the ire of some in the Democratic Party blogosphere who wonder if Webb is perhaps afraid to confront Allen on the race issue head on.

“The first rule is, if your opponent is self-destructing, stay out of the way. Don’t become part of the story,” Denton said. “You don’t need to pile on - because then you may seem a little too self-interested. The Webb people are doing exactly the right thing. Just let them implode. Don’t become part of the story. Don’t react. Because you don’t want to appear yourself as mean or nasty or petty.”

“I wouldn’t stand aside completely,” Kidd said. “I think he’s smart to stand aside and let Allen’s own incompetence undermine his own campaign - and let the media piling on happen. But I think Webb is smart when he has gotten the microphone to shoot the attention to issues - to say, Well, this is really about issues. What that does is let Webb take the high road. I’m not the one beating up on Allen. People have heard these rumors for a while, but Webb’s campaign isn’t orchestrating any of this. This is actually out of their control also.

“He’s smart to shift the attention whenever he can to say, This is about issues, it’s about x, it’s about y, it’s about the war in Iraq. Because that makes him look like he’s above the fray,” Kidd said.

Kidd doesn’t see the n-word story going away anytime soon - “and I think it is possible that we could see this lead to Allen going down.”

“As we’ve seen in the last several gubernatorial elections, those middle-class moderate voters in the suburbs have got to support you for you to win. And I think Allen has to worry about women in the suburbs of Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads who are going to be turned off by this, who are not going to be interested in supporting Allen - the soccer moms-slash-security moms-slash-gas price moms. Those are the people that Allen has to worry about - because they will swing the election one way or the other,” Kidd said.

“This will cause those moderate voters who probably would have voted for him because in any other context they liked him to - they may not vote for Webb in great numbers, but they may just not vote,” Kidd said.

Denton said that at the least the media attention on the race story prevents Allen “from running a campaign based on issues.”

“It makes him defensive. Every interview that he does, these issues come up - so it becomes a burden for every stop that he makes, every interview that he does, literally for the rest of the campaign,” Denton said.

“What it does for Webb is it helps him by shortening the race. And it’s my understanding that it’s really helped his fund raising - that within 24 hours of the Russert debate, they got over $100,000 on the Web site. Each of these little episodes nets them over $500,000 in campaign contributions,” Denton said.

“The free media here is negative - and it buys Webb time, because he doesn’t have as much money. And then he can go out with his ads that are more issue-driven. Which allows him to focus on issues and not seem petty - and stay out of it,” Denton said.

(Published 09-27-06)

Blame it on the Jews

Column by Max Friedman

When actor Mel Gibson isn’t having a good night, as happened a few months ago in Hollywood, he blamed “all the world’s wars on the Jews.” No problem. He was drunk and voicing some inner perceptions that he might have gotten from his publicly anti-Semitic father. He might even have believed it on his own. At least he apologized for what he said. Read more

Commonwealth reunification

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

It just occurred to me - how silly this whole Two Virginias thing is.

And no, I’m not channeling John Edwards here.

I’m talking about how there’s a Virginia and a West Virginia.

Really - do we need to have a Maginot Line separating the two of us?

I mean, I realize that we’ve been split longer than we were together - ever since the Civil War, not even 80 years into our run as a member of the Union.

But I also realize that the only reason that we were torn asunder was that Union troops were able to occupy the western part of the state and break it off to suit Ol’ Abe’s political whims.

Honestly, that’s been so long ago now.

I think it’s plain stupid that I am considered a resident of Western Virginia - when there’s an entire state of Virginia to the west.

And it’s different from East Virginia … how, again?

I know that East Virginians like to turn their noses down to the Western cousins - but, come on, it’s not like there aren’t folks on this side of the Appalachians who haven’t kissed a first cousin or two or more.

And I once had a next-door neighbor who decorated the broken-down truck that he had sitting in his front yard with Christmas lights.

Yes, it happens over on this side of the Iron Curtain, ladies and germs.

Think of the advantages of us reunifying - economies of scale from merging the two state governments, Bruce Hornsby finally gets to cover some of his favorite John Denver classics …

I could go on - but I think the point is well-established at this stage.

And I don’t want to stop here. I can see us unifying the Two Carolinas, then going out west and bringing back together the Two Dakotas.

That would give us the opportunity later on to bring the District of Columbia into the fold as a full-fledged state - in addition to Puerto Rico.

That last one there is important to a lot of people, for one key reason - I was watching a commercial for one of those erectile-dysfunction drugs the other day …

(Er, not because I have any personal interest in what they have to offer. No. Not me.)

… And I noticed in the small print that some offer that they were schlepping to their customers wasn’t valid in Puerto Rico.

Which made me feel bad for guys in Puerto Rico who have a hard time, you know, raising the national flag.

So we take care of that …

And we still have one open spot left to get us back to 50.

I’m thinking of annexing Canada, personally.

I think it should be obvious as to why.

Three letters: O-I-L. As in, they export more of it to us than any other country.

Plus, hey, maybe they can bring some of their national health care down here with them.

Can Webb bite into GOP advantage on vet vote?

The conventional wisdom is that the military vote and veteran vote both tend to lean strongly in the Republican direction - but Democratic Party Senate nominee Jim Webb, a Vietnam War veteran and former Reagan administration Navy secretary, might just be able to turn the conventional wisdom on its head in his race against GOP incumbent George Allen.

“We think Jim’s experience and his early opposition to the war in Iraq will have some sway with military voters,” said Nelson Jones, the veterans-outreach coordinator for the Webb campaign.

“If 70 or 80 percent of the veterans have traditionally voted Republican, what I would be really happy with is if we could get 50 percent. That would really make me happy,” said Jones, like Webb a United States Naval Academy graduate and former Marine Corps officer.

That might be pushing it - but Quentin Kidd, a political-science professor at Christopher Newport University, thinks it is possible that Webb can at least make something of a dent in the expected Allen majority among military and veteran voters.

“And if he’s successful in drawing over even a few percentage points to his side, then I think he’s successful at whatever he’s trying to do,” Kidd said.

“If this election is going to be close, and the two or three percentage points that proves to be the winning margin is the veteran vote or military vote, imagine the ripple effect and power of that around the country - if veterans and active-duty military people swing an election away from a Republican. That would really be powerful,” Kidd told The Augusta Free Press.

It is looking right now like the election could come down to a few percentage points one way or the other. A Wall Street Journal/Zogby poll released last week actually had Webb in the lead by seven points, though polls released last week by Mason-Dixon and Survey USA had Allen in the lead by four and three points, respectively.

Because the race is so tight, and because issues involving the war in Iraq are at the forefront of the discussion in the Senate race in Virginia and at the forefront of the discussion in other congressional races this year, one can expect that there will be plenty of attention on military and veterans issues through Election Day.

“There’s just no comparing George Allen - who never served and doesn’t have a whole lot of experience with foreign policy and with use of military force with respect to foreign policy - to Jim Webb,” Jones said.

“Nobody in Congress, if you look at it, has the kind of experience that Webb would bring not just to the Senate, but to the whole United States Congress. I would hope the voters would look and say, OK, this guy knows what he’s talking about. And what he said would happen in Iraq has in fact happened,” Jones told the AFP.

The Allen campaign has its own veterans-outreach effort - headed up by Paul Galanti, a prisoner of war in Vietnam who served as the Virginia campaign co-chair for fellow Vietnam POW John McCain’s bid for the Republican Party presidential nomination in 2000 and in 2004 appeared in a television ad paid for by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group that targeted Democratic Party presidential nominee and Vietnam vet John Kerry.

“I like Jim Webb - but his credentials, looking at them objectively, he was a Marine lieutenant, highly decorated, but I don’t see where he has better qualifications than that to be a senator. If we were electing a commandant of the Marine Corps, Jim Webb would get my vote in a heartbeat. But frankly, he doesn’t have nearly the qualifications to be a U.S. senator that George Allen does. And I think most Virginians would go along with that,” Galanti told the AFP.

Galanti’s Veterans for Allen group, like the effort of Jones on the Webb-campaign side, is reaching out to military and veteran voters through contacts made with service organizations and lists generated through campaign Web sites.

An outside group is involving itself in the race in a manner reminiscent of the involvement of the Swift Boat group in ‘04. Last week, the group votevets.org released a TV spot attacking Allen for a vote against a 2003 Democratic floor amendment that it said would have provided money for body armor for members of the National Guard and Reserves serving on the front lines in Iraq.

“I was in Baghdad - and we didn’t have the right equipment. And we didn’t have the right equipment for months in Iraq. We didn’t have the proper body armor at least into the next year. This was the first accountable vote that Sen. George Allen had to actually help the men and women that he voted to send to war - and he voted no,” said Jon Soltz, the chairman of votevets.org and a reservist who served with the 1st Armored Division in Iraq in 2003, in a conference call with reporters.

“When the troops needed George Allen, he voted against us. He failed us. And our ad sheds light to the shameful vote and urges Virginians to vote against him, just like he voted against the troops when we were in combat,” Soltz said.

The Allen campaign disputed the claims in the votevets.org ad - noting the senator’s support for several bills providing money for armored vehicles and body armor - before launching something of a counteroffensive in the form of a news conference that it helped organize that featured five female graduates of the Naval Academy going after Webb for a 1979 article in which he wrote critically of the role of women in the military.

“As long as this race remains as close as it is right now, we’re going to see more of this kind of activity,” Kidd said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see some pieces out that talk about whether Allen ever actually was in the service, for example. It depends on how dirty it gets - but if it starts getting personal, I could see somebody hammering home on that point, and I would expect the Allen campaign to respond in kind,” Kidd said.

(Published 09-18-06)

One good turn deserves another

Golf Things Considered column by John Rogers
JSpencerRogers@msn.com  

“The turn is the swing.” That’s what I tell golfers who come to the driving range at Lakeview Golf Course to work on their technique. It’s a little bit of a simplification, but a good shoulder turn around a stable spine is the primary engine for the golf swing. Read more

Where does Warner stand in ‘08 nomination race?

Mark Warner sure has come a long way since the days when his claim to political fame was that he once came in second among candidates with the surname Warner in a United States Senate race.

The former one-term Virginia governor is now considered by more than a few observers to be one of the top three or four contenders for the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nomination - and while it is still early to get too worked up about these kinds of things, the talk that the Warner name could very well have a place reserved on one of the two slots on the national party ticket two years hence is starting to get a bit louder.

“He has positioned himself very well to be on the ticket, if not at the head, as vice president,” said Bob Denton, a political-science professor at Virginia Tech.

“Even to be mentioned as a serious contender gives you a certain flexibility and stature. It allows him to potentially be on the ticket. It allows him to possibly hold a high Cabinet position in a Democratic administration even if he’s not successful in getting on the ticket. He would seem to have a lot of options right now,” Denton told The Augusta Free Press.

Warner has spent a good bit of his time since finishing out his term as governor in January making the rounds in Iowa and New Hampshire - the first two tests in what promises to be a wide-open race on both sides of the political aisle in ‘08, what with the lack of an incumbent in the contest, given that President Bush, now in his second term, cannot succeed himself.

Warner has not formally entered the nomination field as of yet - he told the AFP earlier this month that he will announce his intentions regarding the 2008 race following the congressional elections in November.

Officially, then, according to Warner, his visits to Iowa and New Hampshire and other political hotspots have him “campaigning for Democrats and laying out my ideas about where I think we go from here in this country.”

A focal point for Warner on these cross-country trips has been on burnishing his credentials to speak on foreign policy and homeland security - which he will need to do with the primacy afforded those issues in post-9/11 America.

“I acknowledge that we are safer. I acknowledge that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the president performed well. But what he didn’t do was call upon that spirit that all of us wanted - there would have been no sacrifice too small that all of us wouldn’t have been willing to make,” Warner told reporters at an event in Rockbridge County earlier this month.

“If he would’ve said at that point, hey, we ought to get rid of an energy policy where we borrow money from China so we can buy oil from countries around the world that don’t like us, and if he’d asked us to think differently to think about energy and global warming and national security, I think Americans would have responded. But he didn’t use that opportunity,” Warner said.

“I think the president’s unilateral focus on Iraq has taken the eye off of homeland security, and it’s taken the eye off of how we finish the job in terms of running Al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan and capturing Osama bin Laden,” Warner said.

“So we are safer - but there’s so much more that could be done,” Warner said.

Warner has also been using his time in the potential-presidential-contender spotlight to offer pointed criticisms of the administration’s fiscal policies.

“You’ve got still a general approach that says Democrats only want to look at the revenue side, Republicans only want to look at the spending side - but we’re in such a deep hole, even though the deficit has improved marginally this year, that nobody denies that we’ve got a train wreck coming over the next 25 years as the baby boomers hit retirement age. People know that in their gut,” Warner said.

“I would like to see more discussion about the budget. I would like to see more discussion about competitiveness strategy. I really think that one of the issues in addition to security that we need to connect the dots is between energy policy, global warming, American job creation and national security. That connection seems so obvious - but it’s not been looked at nearly enough,” Warner said.

Warner will need to hit on these themes early and often to emerge from the crowded field of Democratic Party contenders, according to Geoffrey Hill, a research professor emeritus at Utah State and the editor and publisher of DemocratPresident2008.com.

“I don’t think the country can handle another Northeast liberal candidate. I think we need to go outside - which leaves (Indiana senator) Evan Bayh and Mark Warner as the people who have good vote-getting records in fairly decent-sized states and currently red states. So I’ve been considering Evan Bayh and Mark Warner as the most electable candidates. But that said, neither one has made any major national policy speeches to this point - and I think that’s a big mistake,” Hill told the AFP.

“I get the impression that (Democratic National Committee chairman) Howard Dean and company are getting the candidates to restrain themselves so that they can focus on the Senate and House races. If that’s happening, then I think that’s actually a negative for the Democrats - because there is a perception out there that the Republicans are using and saying that, Well, the Democrats keep criticizing, but they don’t have any plans themselves,” Hill said.

“I would like to see Mark Warner make some big policy statements. Why is it so important to gain control of the Congress? I don’t think a lot of people realize the importance of control of the Congress. He could give a speech on just how important it is to Democrats - going through all of the details of how important it is that Democrats gain control of the House and Senate. That would be one topic. Another would be how to win and disengage us from Iraq. How better can we thwart terrorism? And why shouldn’t we act really quickly to change our policy on energy to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?” Hill said.

“He could outline any of those things, make a major speech on it, in support of the Democrats, and significantly increase his chances. But if he doesn’t do that, he runs the risk of becoming one of many other Democrats who are doing and saying the same thing,” Hill said.

“So the question is - how is Mark Warner going to distinguish himself with the 10 or so people who will show up?” Hill said.

Denton offers a different perspective on that issue.

“I think he (Warner) is doing all the right things right now,” Denton said. “He’s been meeting with long-time Democratic operatives. Some of them have even joked that he’s going to president school. He’s certainly been trying to prepare. He’s learning. He’s been well-received so far in the field.

“This is the time when you do your up-front work,” Denton said. “He has some people from the Gore campaign and the Kerry campaign on his team. He’s surrounding himself and has access to some very experienced people. He’s very systematic - almost approaching it as a businessperson would. He’s very systematic doing a lot of the up-front issue work now, doing the actual studying. He’s trying to learn as much as he can, and he is a quick learner. I think he’s doing everything he possibly can.

“I think he’s fairly well-positioned for where we are at this point in the process, quite frankly,” Denton said.

(Published 09-18-06)

TV killed the Internet star

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

“You’re going to need some makeup,” the director told me at the required all-hands staff meeting following the taping of my new TV show on WVPT, “Virginia Viewpoints.”

“I …”

“No, seriously. You’re too … shiny.”

“Too shiny?”
“You could probably lose another 20, too,” my friend Eli said to me at my “Virginia Viewpoints” viewing party the next night.

“Looks like you’re a squirrel storing stuff for the winter in those overblown cheeks of yours. Seriously, I’d think about cutting back on the sweets,” Eli said matter of factly.

It’s been a whole new experience for me - having my shiny, fat face parsed by the critics.

Not to mention my posture.

“Yeah, you’re slouching a bit too much for my liking,” said my lawyer/agent, Harvey D. Shyster III, Esquire.

“And you talk too slow there at the beginning,” said another friend, Mordecai, himself a veteran of exactly zero TV shows.

“But I know slow. And I know that you’re taking too much time. Just spit it out already,” Mordy said.

The funny thing is, I’m not sure if anybody actually watched the show for its intended purpose - namely, to hear me and my handpicked panel discuss the war in Iraq.

We did, I thought, at the least a decent job of that - covering everything from the critics who have raised issues with how the war has been prosecuted to date to the idea that the war is all about oil to the contention that we’re better to take the fight to our enemies in their backyard as opposed to ours to the assertion that the various critics should just keep their big yappers shut.

But it was on a TV show where we did this.

“You’ve got the biggest head that I’ve ever seen,” my sportswriter friend Dobie Madison posited at one point during the viewing party.

“Is there any way you can look less confused the next time?” my former neighbor Earl Earl chimed in.

“And what’s with not wearing a tie? What … you taped this on casual Friday?” his brother Larry Earl added for the record.

“You trying to channel Chris Matthews there? Come on - you can set your sights higher than that.”

That last comment actually came from me - yes, I’m my own worst critic.

So … I’m going to shoot for Tim Russert, losing 20 pounds between now and the next taping, learning how to talk faster and sit up straighter, and …

Oh, yeah, somehow coming across as being less in the way of shiny.

Good thing I have a couple of weeks.

Football in my fantasies

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

I’m waiting …

Been waiting all night.

As I type this column, I’m participating in my annual fantasy-football draft.

For those uninitiated, this is where I get together with a dozen or so friends and play pretend football.

Sorry - duty calls.

MichaelVickFanClub selects Willis McGahee.

I’m not really a member of any Michael Vick Fan Club.

That one’s an inside joke - I’m a University of Virginia graduate with a wife who is a Virginia Tech grad, and I have been needling her for the past two or three years about how UVa. alum Matt Schaub would make a better starting quarterback in Atlanta, whose current signal-caller is Tech product Michael Vick.

Damn - this is getting intrusive.

MichaelVickFanClub selects Rudi Johnson.

Now I’m off the clock for … ever.

The computer randomly gave me the 12th and final pick in the first round in the draft - and because we revert order each round, in the interest of fairness, that means I also had the first pick of the second round.

Almost missed the deadline there - phew!

We would have had this done last week - except that the fine folks at Yahoo! couldn’t keep their fantasy site up and running between 8:55 p.m. and 9:05 p.m. Friday night.

Our draft, scheduled to start promptly at 9 p.m., got going right on time - meaning that those of us who weren’t able to access the site, all of us but two or three people who had logged on in advance of the time when the glitch occurred, got saddled with whoever the computer wanted us to have.

We were going to go with it - given that only the first seven or eight picks had been affected by the problem - until one of the players was saddled with a defense as first-round pick.

Again for the unwashed, you would never take a defense with your first pick. Maybe your 10th pick - but the top picks go for the money players, the running backs and quarterbacks, the guys who can consistently get you the most points on Sunday.

Sorry …

MichaelVickFanClub selects Philip Rivers.

This is me trying to outsmart everybody. Anybody can take Peyton Manning and do some damage. Me, I like to go for the second-tier guy that I have decided, after months of intensive study, will be the diamond in the rough who shocks the world by breaking the record for touchdown passes and yards …

Er …

MichaelVickFanClub selects Drew Bledsoe.

Four picks down, and I have my two starting running backs and my starting and backup quarterbacks.

This is a big year for me as far as my pretend football career is concerned. I was league runnerup in 2003 and then won it all in 2004 before fading down the stretch in 2005 and finishing out of the playoff picture.

My problem was obvious - I lacked quality running backs and quarterbacks.

That taken care of now, I still need another running back, a couple of tight ends, a wide-receiver corps …

A kicker …

A defense …

Looks like it’s time to get to work.

Let me win the lottery … please

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

News flash … I didn’t win the lottery.

Again.

Oh well.

Just doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me - this whole winning-the-lottery-and-being-richer-than-God thing that I’ve been trying my hand at the past couple of years.

Which really, really stinks, for those keeping score at home.

I mean, think of all the positive that I could do with that amount of cash.

I’d … bankroll every nonprofit from here to Kalamazoo.

Not to mention buy turkeys for people to make sure that everybody had Thanksgiving dinner.

And Christmas dinner. And New Year’s dinner.

And President’s Day dinner.

See, I’m deserving.

OK, so honestly, most of the good that would be done would be done with Numero Uno in mind.

To put it another way, I’d have a different color Lamborghini for every day of the week.

(And two for each of the weekend days. And for me, the concept of weekend would be something that begins on Thursday and ends on Monday. You know. Because I wouldn’t be going back to work. Never ever again.)

And I’d buy a big mansion overlooking the Valley - and like the Grinch, I’d watch over everything, and harrumph a lot.

(Ultrarich people, it seems to me, harrumph a lot. In addition to curling their noses as if they have just smelled really sour milk. Put me down for my fair share of that, too.)

I’d devote the remainder of my time to eating Haagen-Dazs and wearing ascots (with my initials embroidered on them) and writing really bad poetry and working out the details on my own VH1 reality show and …

I can dream, can’t I?

Maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t win after all, looking back at it.

Seriously, look at me now.

I work hard for every cent that I have. I don’t have much to complain - er, harrumph - about.

(Or much time to do it.)

I can’t afford Haagen-Dazs. I’ve never even seen a person with my own two eyes wearing an actual ascot.

I generally lead a life so dull and uneventful that even the reality-TV channel that you can get on the upper tier of the digital cable wouldn’t want to do a show on me.

(The sound that you hear right now is my hands clasping in prayer. Please, please, Lord. Next time, let me win. I promise, I’ll never ask for anything else again.)