"Sarah P. - BOO-yah!"

To the guys who think SportsCenter is all the news they need, which is a whole lot of guys of every political stripe, race, creed and religion, Barack Obama is the second most recognizable black voice in the country.

Stuart Scott, ESPN's hip, fast talking sports anchor, is the first.

"BOO-yah!" is his trademark, a verbal exclamation point, the equivalent of the cable news pundit "Gotcha!". Scott's fast paced, "let's get jiggy with it" style of delivery is the last thing that hundreds of thousands of men across the country hear before going to sleep.

After watching the stock market drop over 500 points yesterday, I wanted to see somebody putting some points on the board. So I turned to Monday Night Football. The Cowboys/Eagles game delivered just what I needed - four full quarters of offensive fireworks, with the Cowboys hanging on to a four point lead in the end to win it.

During the game, I was flipping channels back and forth during the commercials, alternating between CNN, CNBC, and the game. Larry King had his usual suspects on CNN, squaring off on the latest controversies between the Obama and McCain campaigns with the same old tired platitudes they’ve been pedaling for weeks. Larry Kudlow had his usual suspects on CNBC, each of them staring squarely into the camera to proclaim that they had known all along what was really wrong with the economy and how we could fix it in three easy steps.

Maybe, I said to myself as hit the remote to flip back to T.O. flashing his crocodile smile to the cameras after his first half touchdown, maybe we should take the experts on CNN and the experts on CNBC and swap them, the way they do on those reality shows like Wife Swap. As Stuart Scott and Emmitt Smith joked last night after the game, I wondered - just the thought of something like that happening in real life would be “sick nasty” – probably one of the only times in politics that a double negative could turn out to be an "unbelievably awesome" development.

I was thinking this only half in jest, though, because for the life of me, I can’t understand why McCain would put that tongue-tied benchwarmer Tucker Bounds out there in front of a camera trying to run interference for him when Tucker can barely remember which lie he’s telling tonight.

Why doesn’t McCain’s campaign have one of those square jawed, sharp eyed guys with the slicked down hairdos, the kind of guy who takes the art of telling a good lie seriously, the way they do on CNBC, instead of this rube? Why don’t they have a guy who looks like a real live Republican is supposed to look. Oh, I forgot, they’re all in high demand back at their day jobs on Wall Street, announcing that they will be “restating” the earnings they knew damn well their companies didn’t have in the first place. I hope they aren't on tomorrow night telling us how easy it is to "fix" the economy.

The fundamental changes that would have to take place in our modern American society are sacrifices most of us aren't willing to bear anyway.

I’ve been saying for awhile that when you start to hear those metaphorical dogs barking, when you start to feel those figurative water hoses stinging, you will know we are close. This thing we have all signed on for, to try to elect a black American to the presidency of the United States, is actually going pretty good. So good, in fact, that the people who want the opposition to win aren’t very happy right now. And a lot of them are on TV, masquerading as "fair and balanced" journalists.

Oh, they smile for the cameras.

They sit on the little TV news shows and puff out their chests and jut out their jaws and pontificate until it is time to go home.

But if you could see them off camera, after they’ve walked down the hall, after they’ve exited the lobby and are looking for their car, you will likely see that the smile has fallen, that the proud jut has taken on a dour droop.

In fact, they probably look a lot like most of us do when we leave work after a shitty day, exchanging our professional face for our off-the-clock one by the time we slide our seatbelts on. Kinda like the Eagles players did when they hit the locker room last night.

At the rate the McCain campaign is going, any day now I expect them to inform us that the earth has always been flat, and anyone who tells you any different is a part of an effort by the Obama campaign to “disrespect” their beliefs.

When I heard Ralph Reed’s high pitched voice earlier tonight on Larry King, asserting with righteous sanctimony that Sarah Palin was no longer going to testify in the Troopergate investigation because the investigation was tainted, my eyebrows went up. When he continued, adding that the investigation was being orchestrated by the Obama campaign, I understood right then why people throw things at their TV sets.

Are we back in the thirties? A white woman gets in hot water, doing something she’s not supposed to be doing, and what does she do? She hauls a black bogeyman out of nowhere.

Now that’s sick AND nasty.

I imagine, if I can only haul one more Sarah Palin analogy out of last night's game before your eyes start to glaze over, that it would have to be this one. In the second quarter, while the Eagles rookie wideout DeSean Jackson was taking it to the house on a 61-yard pass play, Jackson flipped the ball behind him in celebration a half a step BEFORE he got to the end zone.

What would Stuart Scott say during the Sarah Palin highlights after her last two weeks of running for the vice presidency?

"Sarah, baby, next time, wait until you actually BREAK THE PLANE before you start getting your groove on. BOO-yah!"