Sorry, but Americans are sports fans, and they've expressed a growing preference for the multi-level "playoff." Not enough anymore for a team to be quietly awarded a trophy or "pennant" for simply winning the most games over the course of a long season. No. Now we need Cinderella "wild card" teams, quarterfinals, division championships, all leading up to a "Super Bowl" or "World Series." Look at the constant hand-wringing over the fact that college football doesn't lend itself to this structure due to some old-fashioned notion that "student athletes" should get back to taking classes and exams after a brief 12-week season, instead of spending most of the winter playing their way to the top of some "playoff pyramid."

And our biggest sporting event is the presidential election, and our TV-addicted masses want to see those horses out there slogging through the mud, darn it.

Oh, the Democratic Party is the party of quotas, no mistake. This was the gang, after all, who turned the Space Shuttle program into an Affirmative Action carnival ("Let's see; we've sent up a schoolmarm "astronaut" and a black "astronaut," what's next? Openly Gay Lesbian? Pacific Islander? A midget?