Gary Kamiya

There are few political relationships more fraught than that between American Jews and Israel. As the national emblem of Jewish identity, Israel is seen by many Jews as sacrosanct. Some Jews passionately identify with Israel and its policies and angrily reject any criticism of it, often attacking critics as anti-Semites or self-hating Jews. But even those Jews who privately harbor misgivings about Israel’s policies often keep their opinions to themselves because the subject is simply too charged. Anyone, Jewish or not, who dares to say or write anything critical about Israel quickly learns that they have poked a hornet’s nest.

What makes the subject especially sensitive — and keeps many people, including most journalists, from going anywhere near it — is that, far more than any other issue, it splits the progressive and intellectual community. Speaking more plainly, it divides one’s friends and colleagues — sometimes even one’s family. Jews have always played a prominent role in America’s progressive and intellectual circles. And if you have a connection to those circles and you criticize Israel, you are almost certain to deeply offend or anger someone whom you respect, like, and have many things in common with. Small wonder that, as former Israeli official Daniel Levy told me, most people, Jews and non-Jews alike, “decide to sit this one out. It’s more of a headache than it’s worth.”

The taboo isn’t only enforced by such personal matters, of course. It’s also aggressively enforced by powerful Jewish lobbies like AIPAC, mainstream Jewish groups and leaders like Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who claim to speak on behalf of all Jews. Congress, intimidated by the moral authority (or moral blackmail) and political clout wielded by these organizations and afraid of offending Jewish donors who are a major force in Democratic fundraising, invariably falls into line. The fact that Congress has staked out a position on Israel to the right of the Bush administration’s pretty much says it all. The default right-wing position on Israel is holy writ in American politics, and explains why Hillary Clinton can pander to the right-wing pro-Israel lobby by casually threatening to “totally obliterate” Iran — vaporize 70 million men, women and children who have nothing to do with their leaders’ anti-Israeli posturings — without paying any political price for such irresponsible statements.

Nothing is more urgently needed in our political discourse than for the taboo against speaking forthrightly about Israel to be overthrown. After all, notwithstanding its profound connection to some American Jews and its (partly justified) status as a beloved icon with whom we have a “special relationship,” Israel is not the 51st state — it is a foreign country, and one smack-dab in the center of the Middle East, a region in which we have some considerable national interest. The enforced silence about Israel has prevented us from thinking clearly about the Middle East, and helped enable both the disastrous war we are now fighting in Iraq and a possible future one against Iran.

But because of the highly sensitive nature of the subject, American Jews must lead the way.

Which is why the birth of J Street, whose goal Ben-Ami says is “to redefine what it means to be pro-Israel,” is cause for unalloyed celebration. “Over the course of a quarter century of doing American politics, I’ve seen the way in which the Israel issue plays out,” Ben-Ami said in a phone interview from J Street’s Washington, D.C., office. “And it greatly disturbs me and it greatly disturbs a very large number of progressive American Jews, who believe very strongly in Israel but feel that the way in which the American Jewish community’s voice has been expressed on these issues doesn’t reflect our values or opinions. Only the voices of the far right have been heard. They’ve really hijacked the debate when it comes to Israel.”

That debate has been skewed, Ben-Ami said, because most liberal American Jews have a broad range of interests and are not obsessed with Israel, whereas their hard-line counterparts tend to be focused on that single issue. This means that although the loudest voices on Israel come from the right, large numbers of American Jews hold much more moderate positions. “The policies we believe in — a two-state solution with a broad-based land for peace agreement; pursuing diplomatic solutions with places like Iran before military ones — are positions that are broadly held by large numbers of people, Jewish or not,” Ben-Ami said. “I hesitate to quantify and say that a majority of American Jews would agree with our positions, but if it isn’t a majority, I think it’s a very large minority. And so at a minimum, what we can succeed in doing is busting the myth that people who think like this are all alone.”

But J Street is doing more than providing cover for liberal American Jews: It’s bringing money to the table. J Street is an advocacy and educational group, but more important, it is a political action committee — a PAC. This means that, unlike the existing (and admirable) liberal advocacy Jewish organizations like the Israel Policy Forum, Americans for Peace Now and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, J Street will be a true political player, able to provide financial support to members of Congress who dare to defy the right-wing Israel lobby and work to defeat others who support destructive Israeli policies. Equally important, it plans to educate politicians that many Jewish donors don’t expect unquestioning fealty to Israel in exchange for their contributions — what Ben-Ami calls “connecting the dots.”

J Street’s first-year budget is a modest $1.5 million, but the Internet revolution in politics has changed the rules of the game. Its founders hope to raise significant money online, following in the wildly successful footsteps of MoveOn and the Obama campaign.

M.J. Rosenberg, the policy director of the Israel Policy Forum, a liberal education and advocacy group that he says will work “in parallel” with J Street, said he thought the new organization had a good chance of succeeding.

“They’re primarily a PAC, so I think they can have success because they’re tapping into politics,” Rosenberg said. “Politics is very attractive right now. They’re going to follow the Obama/MoveOn model, with a heavy Web presence, trying to create a mass movement. They’re really going to go after the young people, which is something the mainstream organizations don’t do.”

J Street will release its first round of political endorsements in June. It will start out focusing on a few key, cherry-picked races, featuring progressive candidates running against vulnerable incumbents whom the new PAC deems irresponsibly hawkish on Israel. If its involvement makes a difference in even one race, it will send a powerful message to members of Congress that their positions on the Middle East will result in both carrots and sticks.

Rosenberg said J Street’s potential ability to raise funds could make a crucial difference in Congress. “Take the example of Congresswoman Betty McCollum, from Minnesota,” Rosenberg said. “She came out strongly against an AIPAC bill blocking aid to the Palestinians, so AIPAC attacked her in her district and said she was an apologist for terrorists. In the end AIPAC couldn’t do anything. She prevailed. But now, the way it could work is, if she gets the word from some donor that ‘you’re going to lose $25,000,’ she can pick up the phone and call J Street and say, ‘I’m down $25,000 because I stuck my neck out on this issue.’ And they’ll say, ‘We’ll make it up, and you’ll have $30,000.’ I mean, that never existed before. And it really can make a difference.

“The other thing is, even some of these people who take a really hard line on these issues, when you wave $2,000 checks in front of them, they might decide that they don’t really feel the necessity to say this crazy stuff,” Rosenberg said. “There’s never been a downside to Palestine-bashing on the part of members of Congress. And now they’re going to be identified. It can only be good.”

One of the things that frustrates progressive Jews, Rosenberg said, is that Jewish Democrats like Jerry Nadler or Barney Frank are liberal on every issue except Israel, I asked him if the existence of an organization like J Street might lead such politicians to moderate their hawkish line on Israel. “Oh, no doubt. I think they very rarely get challenged from the left,” Rosenberg said. “They hear from the right-wing AIPAC crowd on this issue, but the people on the left talk to them about other issues. They don’t talk to them about this one. So I think all it takes is them hearing that this is what their constituents want, and I think that they will moderate their positions.”

For his part, Ben-Ami said politicians on the Hill had reacted extremely positively to J Street’s launch. “It is remarkable, the level of enthusiasm that people have for the idea that somebody’s going to step in here and stop the madness,” he said. “Look, America is Israel’s friend. It’s pretty locked up. About the only thing that we can do to drive America away from Israel is to press our luck too far, keep on saying ‘Is it pro-Israel enough?,’ keep demanding that we have 32 preamble clauses that say how bad the Palestinians are.” Ben-Ami said the politicians he spoke to wanted to make sure that the U.S.-Israel relationship was not damaged by such overkill, and were grateful that a new organization would “give them a little bit of relief from this constant pressure.”

J Street’s founders boast strong ties to Israel — essential to deflect attacks from the hawkish pro-Israel right. Executive director Ben-Ami, who in addition to working for Dean was President Bill Clinton’s deputy domestic policy adviser, has deep ties to the Jewish state: His grandparents were among the founders of Tel Aviv, his parents were Israelis, his family suffered in the Holocaust, and he has lived in Israel, where he was almost blown up in a Jerusalem terror attack. Daniel Levy, who also played a key role in J Street’s creation, is a former high-ranking Israeli official who took part in the 2001 Taba negotiations with the Palestinians and was the lead Israeli drafter of the groundbreaking Geneva Initiative. J Street also boasts the endorsement of some heavy hitters from the Israeli political, military and security establishment, including a former senior member of Mossad, a former foreign minister and the former chief of staff of the Israeli army.

I asked Ben-Ami if he really thought his organization could change a political reality that has endured for decades and seems locked in stone. “I am deeply optimistic,” Ben-Ami said. In addition to the fact that many Jews agreed with J Street’s policies, he pointed out that the “very visible” right- wing Jewish support for the Iraq war and for a possible future war against Iran was a powerful motivation for liberal American Jews to speak out.

“Some of the loudest voices that are beating the war drums are those of either neocons who happen to be Jewish, or established Jewish community leaders who happen to be neocons. This is very disturbing,” Ben-Ami said. “And it applies not only to Israel but to the whole Middle East — whether it’s American policy towards Iran, or maybe it had some role in the leadup to the war in Iraq. And I think this has made people say, ‘Wait a minute, I may never have been interested in Israel, I may never have been interested in the Jewish community, but these folks are speaking in my name and driving us towards wars and policies that I don’t want to be responsible for.’”

Daniel Levy, the former Israeli negotiator, said J Street would also try to make hay off of mainstream Jewish organizations’ cynical embrace of far-right Christian bigots like Rev. John Hagee. “John Hagee will be a bit of a poster boy for us, a very useful stick to beat the bastards with,” Levy said. “There’s a Jewish constituency out there that’s extremely uncomfortable about making common cause with people like Hagee. He’s a total bigot, anti-gay, anti-women’s rights, anti-Catholic, and suddenly he’s the best friend of the Jews? It’s not like Israel and the Jews are some kind of hunted group, and but for Hagee America would be bombing Israel and cutting off aid. It’s a disgrace, it’s dangerous to make common cause with those people. They’re not your real allies. The fact that John Hagee and Christians United for Israel, which has Gary Bauer and all the worst people in the world on their board, unite to ‘honor Israel’ around the country, should have the Jewish community up in arms.”

Of course, the reason some American Jews have embraced the likes of Hagee — or George W. Bush, for that matter — is that they regard Israel’s security as paramount, and feel that any criticism from the United States endangers it. Ben-Ami said he understood and sympathized with this attitude, but that it led to policies that were both unjust and ultimately bad for Israel. “Look, I lost my grandmother in the Holocaust, I’ve lost whole branches of my family. I understand that people come out of an experience that was searing. Literally. And that’s something that would shape your mind-set as a community — the desire for safety and a place where we would be free from that. But we’re not doing a very good job at creating a secure home by conducting ourselves in this manner towards another people that are a minority, and that are powerless, and treating them in a way that forces them essentially to become terrorists, and leads to us being again in danger.”

Another key reason that J Street is urgently needed, Ben-Ami said, is to heal a dangerous and growing schism in the Jewish community. “There’s a real generational issue here,” he said. “Look at the young people. The Jewish community is a fairly progressive community and always has been. If you look at the environmental community today, if you look at the people working on Darfur, on Tibet, a large percentage of them are Jews. So the question is what’s going to happen to these people. If we say that in order to be tied to the established Jewish community, either through federations or synagogues or any institutional entity, you have to go through a litmus test of ‘do you stand with Israel right or wrong on everything’ before we’ll let you feel comfortable in our institutions, we’re going to drive all these people away. We’re going to lose an entire generation.”

With its small war chest and staff of four, J Street faces long odds. Its founders say that many American Jews, especially in New York and Los Angeles, have offered them support, but acknowledge that they’re going more on a hunch that their time has come than anything else. The fledgling organization is challenging not only the vast institutional and financial muscle of lobbies like AIPAC, but a daunting array of psychological and emotional hurdles within the Jewish community. But if it succeeds, it could make an significant, perhaps even a decisive, difference in American Mideast policy. It could heal a growing rift within the American Jewish community. And it could help save Israel from itself. Stay tuned.

Bachmann, Cain and Perry are no longer sharing their spiritual rectitude with a national audience, but the remaining candidates continue to flaunt their Christianity. Newt Gingrich, who has noisily proclaimed that his conversion to Catholicism saved his soul, repeated Perry’s charge, accusing President Obama of launching a “war on religion” by requiring that church-owned hospitals and universities provide insurance that covers birth control. “It’s a fundamental assault on the right of freedom of religion,” Gingrich said. “On the very first day I’m inaugurated I will sign an executive order repealing every Obama attack on religion.”

Gingrich has framed the election as a battle for America’s soul, warning that if Obama is not defeated, the United States is in danger of becoming a “secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists.” Such apocalyptic warnings, combined with statements like “I can’t imagine being comfortable with an atheist in the presidency,” insinuate that Obama is a fake Christian – a widespread belief among the religious right. (That’s actually a comparatively moderate view: The hardcore see him as the Antichrist.)

Rick Santorum went even further, essentially calling for America to become a theocracy. At the Thanksgiving Family Forum last year, Santorum said, “Our civil wars have to comport with the higher law … That’s why as long as abortion is ‘legal,’ according to the Supreme Court, we will never have rest, because that does not comport with God’s law … As long as there is discordance between the two there will be agitation.”

The Republican strategy — loudly proclaiming one’s Christian faith, while attacking Obama as an agent of secular evil, if not actually Satan himself – is right out of the Fox News playbook. As the voice of the American far right, the ultimate undeclared super-duper-GOP-PAC, Fox News has embraced the cracked “birther” movement and generally done everything within its latitudinous definition of “fair and balanced” to portray Obama as a fake-Christian, foreign-born, America-hating Muslim. (Fox’s “War on Christmas” rants appear with such clockwork regularity at Christmastime that I use them as reminders to open my Advent Calendar.)

The only GOP candidate who has not openly pursued this strategy is the front-runner, Mitt Romney. Romney has avoided the subject because as a Mormon, his own Christian credentials are suspect. But as the ultimate political panderer and opportunist, he would play the Christian card if he could. Like all the GOP candidates, Romney has tried to paint Obama as an alien Other, elite, mysterious, malevolent – in a word, slightly satanic. And also like them, Romney presents his free-market, anti-government ideology as more “American,” and by implication more “Christian,” than Obama’s.

As someone who has spent many happy hours studying Christian theology, from Origen to Hans Kung, as well as modern scholarship about Jesus, I supposed I should be pleased by this eruption of holy fervor among the Republican candidates for the highest office in the land. But there’s just one little problem.

Jesus would have been appalled by the whole pack of them.

We do not know very much about the historical Jesus. But everything we know indicates that the carpenter from Galilee would not have been pleased to learn that this pack of coldhearted, sanctimonious, wealth-exalting politicians were claiming to be his followers.

I’m not saying that Jesus would have been a Democrat. Anyone who pretends to find support for specific political policies or ideologies in the Bible is delusional. Scholars cannot agree if Jesus was a social revolutionary, a tortured mystic, or something altogether different. Even what Jesus himself believed about the most essential aspects of what was to become “Christianity’ – a religion founded not by him, but by his disciple Paul of Tarsus — is unclear. As leading biblical scholar Bart Ehrman noted in “Jesus, Interrupted,” some of the most important Christian doctrines, including the divinity of Christ, the Trinity and the concept of heaven and hell, were not held by Jesus himself: They were added later, when the church transformed itself into a new religion rather than a Jewish sect.

Ehrman told me that the authors of the four Gospels portray Jesus in such contradictory ways that there is no intellectually honest way to reconcile them. Mark, for example, depicts Jesus as doubting and despairing on the way to the cross, while Luke portrays him as calm. Ehrman argues that such contradictory accounts can only be reconciled by creating, in effect, a bogus “fifth Gospel” that does not exist.

But having said all that, we still have the evidence of the Bible itself. And one does not need to believe in the infallibility of that document to see that the Jesus who is depicted in it was implacably opposed to authoritarianism, warmongering, contempt for the poor, exaltation of wealth, conformity, and sanctimoniousness – in short, everything the contemporary Republican Party stands for.

In an ugly culmination of the successful, race-baiting “Southern strategy” that has essentially driven the GOP for decades, the Republican candidates have vied with each other to demonize poor people, especially if they’re black. That’s why Gingrich has repeatedly attacked Obama as the “food stamp president,” and why Mitt Romney went out of his way to say “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” contrasting his stance with that of the Democrats, of whom he disparagingly said, “We will hear from the Democrat Party (about) the plight of the poor.” (As Gail Collins wrote in a hilarious column, “It is interesting to hear a candidate directly attacking the opposition for being concerned about the destitute.”)

We have no idea what position Jesus would have taken on progressive taxation or whether he would have supported the Dodd-Frank Act. But we do know that Jesus, unlike Gingrich and Romney, was concerned about the poor. In fact, he made it clear that concern for the poor was an absolutely essential principle of his faith.

This is not surprising. For Jesus himself was completely destitute, and he insisted that his companions be as well. As they traveled around Palestine, they ate whatever they were given and slept in whatever house would take them. If no shelter was offered them they slept outdoors. As he told his 12 disciples in Luke 9:3, “Take nothing for your journey, neither staff, nor bag, nor bread, neither money, neither have two coats apiece. And whatever  house ye enter into, there abide, and from there depart. And whoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them.”

Romney’s statement that he was “not concerned about the very poor” is telling. For Jesus explicitly stated that he was concerned not just about the poor, but about the poorest, the lowest and most despised members of society. Jesus’ famous saying in the Beatitudes in Luke 6:20 is usually translated as “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” But as biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan noted in “The Essential Jesus,” “Greek has two different words for ‘poor’ (penes) and ‘destitute’ (ptochos), so it should be ‘blessed are the destitute.’” Crossan argues that Jesus’ mission was revolutionary precisely because he proclaimed, against all tradition, that the Kingdom to come was not just for the respectable poor – the “deserving poor,” in Republican parlance – but for the destitute.

Jesus again makes this explicit in Luke 9:48: “And said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.”

Jesus demanded that his followers help the neediest. In Matthew 19:21 he says:, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” But Jesus went further, warning that the mere possession of wealth, and the overvaluation of worldly possessions, stands in the path of salvation. From Matthew 19:24: “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

But Jesus’ most explicit repudiation of the GOP’s ethos is found in Luke 16:19, in his famous story of Lazarus and the rich man.

 There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table; moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores. And it came to pass that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom; the rich man also died and was buried. And in hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that they who would pass from here to you cannot, neither can they pass to us, that would come from there.

The Republican candidates all claim to be devout Christians. But between the compassionate teachings of Jesus and their coldhearted, mean-spirited ideology, there is a great gulf.

Whether Gingrich and Romney’s callous attitude toward the least among us will hurt them with the 78 percent of Americans who claim to be Christians is uncertain. From the 1925 publication of “The Man Nobody Knows,” a bestseller that depicted Jesus as a successful businessman, there is a long tradition of smug, self-serving Christianity in this country, a Christianity easily compatible with the harshest and most uncharitable values and beliefs. But in their zeal to win over the most resentful, hate-filled members of their party, the Republican candidates run a greater risk. They are turning before our eyes into archetypal villains, bad guys out of our collective cultural memory bank.

And fittingly, the villain they are becoming is associated with Fox News’ favorite holiday, Christmas.

For some devout Americans, Christmas is a primarily religious occasion. But for most, it is a secular holiday, a time to make children happy, see friends, and eat and drink too much. However, it also carries, in its own modest way, a deeper meaning, even for those who are not religious at all. That meaning is imparted by our culture, but it taps into our desire to rise above ourselves. The bell-ringing Santas collecting for charity on street corners, the heartwarming movies like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” create a small but real sense that Christmas is, or should be, about regeneration, kindness, a new start — what St. Augustine called “The enchiridion of faith, love and hope.”

The most powerful expression of this humanistic and moral approach to Christmas is Charles Dickens’
“A Christmas Carol.” In the beginning of Dickens’ tale, the wealthy businessman Ebenezer Scrooge is approached by some fellow businessmen, collecting for charity.

Scrooge’s reply tolls like a great, black bell.

‘Are there no prisons?’

‘Plenty of prisons,’ said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.’And the Union workhouses,’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are they still in operation?’

‘Both very busy, sir.’

‘Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,’ said Scrooge. ‘I’m very glad to hear it.”

… “I help to support the establishments I have mentioned — they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.’

‘Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.’

‘If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

It is one of the great indirect cries from the heart in all of literature.

“Are there no prisons?” may play well with the resentful Republican base. But Romney, or whoever runs against Obama, may discover that the American people are not going to vote for Scrooge.

It was a taut game, this 21-17 affair, airless and strange and beautiful to watch for purists, a game that lacked surface melodrama but in which the outcome hung on every snap. A baseball-type football game. A novelistic game, inexorable and fatalistic, the football equivalent of Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth,” in which any change in the late narrative would have meant a different ending – Lily Bart not dying in despair, Tom Brady riding off into the sunset with four rings. But the fates – it felt like that, anyway, but it was just players making plays – decreed otherwise. Manningham’s gorgeous snag of Manning’s perfectly thrown 38-yard pass on the left sideline, with only a nanosecond to get his feet down and secure possession of the ball as he was slammed out of bounds, will go down as one of the most memorable catches in Super Bowl history, up there with Steeler Lynn Swann’s balletic leap in 1979 and John Taylor’s winning grab in the 49ers’ last-second victory over the Bengals. For Giants’ fans, it will forever be Catch 2.

This was one of the hardest Super Bowls to predict that I can remember (I called it for the Patriots in a close one, but with consummate lack of confidence in my pick) and the actual game revealed why. These two teams are equal in a very odd way. Odd, because for anyone who watched these two teams play at the end of the regular season and then in the playoffs – I admit I saw the Giants play more than the Patriots — it was obvious that the Giants were a more well-rounded team and, just as important, were peaking at the right time. They had a better defense on every level, especially in the secondary and on the defensive line, and their offense was hot, with Manning – an elite quarterback in every way, and now with the two rings to prove it – throwing to a devastating trio of wideouts. Their running game was just OK, but good enough to keep the defense honest. And the Giants were both battle-tested and on a roll, having faced what were almost elimination games since week 12 of the season.

Facing this explosive offense was a flawed Patriots’ defense, its Achilles’ heel its secondary. That should have tipped the odds to the Giants. As announcer Al Michaels pointed out, although the line favored the Pats, most fans around the country seemed to think the Giants would win.

But the Patriots had an X-factor: Tom Brady. Manning is a great quarterback, but Brady is on a different level – he’s one of the greatest of all time. And this killer was running The Machine – an offensive juggernaut featuring an unguardable flanker, first-rate wide receivers and – the trump card – two tight ends, Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez, who had just completed the greatest season two teammates ever had. Plus, there was the Patriot mystique — their three Super Bowl victories and their brilliant coach Bill Belichick. For me, that made the game a coin toss, maybe slightly tipping to the Pats. But they would be hanging on for dear life all game long and have to win on a last-minute drive.

That’s pretty much how it played out. If the Pats had had a healthy Gronkowski, they’d probably have won this game. But they didn’t. And when the chips were down, Brady and the Patriots couldn’t get the job done – and Manning and the Giants did. It wasn’t the Patriots’ last drive – that never had more than about a 10 percent chance of success, Brady needing to go 80 yards to score a touchdown with only 57 seconds left and one timeout, a situation close to Hail Mary land. It was on the drive before that Brady and Welker could have put the Giants away, and didn’t.

At the start of the game, it looked like the Giants could move the ball almost at will. The Giants received, New England deferring, and they immediately smashed the ball down the Patriots’ throats. They had crisply moved almost 50 yards and were in field goal range when Manning was sacked – a premonition of things to come for the Giants, whose inability to score when on the Patriots’ side of the field almost killed them. But a great punt by Steve Weatherford – who had a superb day, repeatedly pinning the Patriots’ deep – forced Brady to start from his own six-yard-line.

Then something extremely unusual happened. Under heavy pressure in his end zone, but not early pressure – meaning his receivers were well downfield – Brady threw it away deep down the middle. It was pretty obviously a throw-away, but the refs almost never call grounding on deep balls over the middle, because it’s usually vaguely plausible that the quarterback and his receiver are not on the same page. I think maybe I’ve seen it called once, if that. But the refs put their hands over their heads – safety. 2-0 Giants. It was the worst possible start for Brady. And when the Giants immediately marched down the field and scored, Victor Cruz gathering in a 2-yard pass from Manning, the Pats looked a little overmatched. The Giants had run 14 plays to the Patriots’ one. It felt like Brady had to generate at least a field goal on this drive to keep the 9-0 game from getting out of hand.

Brady went to work, a surgeon, methodically carving up the Giants, hitting the quicksilver Welker and wideout Deion Branch and mixing in some effective runs by BenJarvus Green-Ellis. A tipped pass by Giants’ defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul stopped the drive at the 11 but Stephen Gostowski kicked a 28-yard field goal to make it 9-3.

Turning point 1 of what would be a tense succession of turning points, climaxes and pivotal struggles. New England had weathered the storm and was trailing only by six, despite having been physically mauled and having made a crucial error on their very first offensive play. From here to the end of the game, every possession, every down, was critical.

When linebacker-size Giants’ running back  Brandon Jacobs ripped off an 11-yard gain through the center of the Pats’ defensive line, Big Blue appeared to be on the verge of bludgeoning the Patriots into early submission, as analyst Chris Collinsworth pointed out. (Collinsworth was good, as usual, although his flat assertion that Giants’ wideout Mario Manningham was to blame for an incomplete sideline bomb because he ran too close to the sideline was dubious – Manningham could have been reacting to an off-target Manning pass.) But a key holding penalty snuffed out a promising drive, and the Giants had to punt.

The next series was when Brady demonstrated his mastery. Starting at his own 4-yard line, he mixed passes to Welker, Hernandez and Gronkowski, along with some potent runs by tough, undersize back Danny Woodhead, and moved the Patriots all the way down the field, culminating in a sweet TD pass to Woodhead, whose quick right-left juke on a route of the backfield left a Giants linebacker looking for his jock.  At the end of the first half, disconcertingly, the Patriots had the lead, 10-9.

There was one ominous sign for the Pats. Their all-world tight end Rob Gronkowski, playing on a severe ankle sprain, was running like a tight end from 1960 – very, very slowly. Brady’s most potent weapon, the guy with the hands like oven mitts, was little more than a decoy. This was huge. Still, the Giants could have been excused for feeling like they might have made a fatal error in not putting away the Pats when they had the chance.

And when Brady opened the second half by moving his team 79 yards down the field, finishing with a 12-yard strike  to Hernandez, the momentum had completely reversed. Now it was Brady who looked like he was going to score on every drive, and the Giants, trailing 17-9, who absolutely needed to score.

And Manning delivered, leading them to a field goal for 17-12.

The Giants had weathered the storm. They forced Brady and the Pats to punt. And when they stormed back down the field and kicked another field goal for 17-15, it was anyone’s game.

Brady made a rare mistake: flushed from the pocket, he underthrew a long interception intended for Gronkowski. But it was as good as a punt, and the Giants were stymied when defensive back Moore made a great, perfectly timed hit on Manningham, forcing the Giants to punt again.

The two teams had traded punches. Now came the key drive. New England got the ball back with 9:24 left on their own 8-yard line. If Brady could lead them to a touchdown, the Giants would be down two scores with not a lot of time. Mixing runs and passes, he moved them beautifully down the field, burning huge clock.

Then came the key play in the game – at least the one before Manningham’s heroics. There were less than five minutes left, secondand 11, ball on the Giants’ 44 yard line. Welker ran a 20-yardish pattern in the middle of the field, moving left to right. Brady threw it toward Welker’s right, meaning the everyman-size slot man had to leap slightly backward for the ball. It wasn’t an easy catch, but it’s one that’s almost automatic for Welker, who has some of the best hands in football. If he had caught it, deep in Giants’ territory and with the Giants having burned two timeouts, the game would probably be over. It would certainly be over if the Patriots could score a touchdown.

But he didn’t catch it. There was a shot of the Patriot players on the sideline screaming in disbelief after the ball went through Welker’s hands.

For the Patriots, it was 2008 all over again. Just before Tyree made his famous catch, Manning threw a sideline pattern that Patriots’ cornerback Asante Samuel timed perfectly. He leaped for the interception that would have ended the game – and the ball went through his fingers. Safety Rodney Harrison later said that Asante had the best hands of any defensive back in football, and when he didn’t make the catch, he knew this might not be the Patriots’ day. It felt exactly like that when Welker dropped the pass.

The Giants got the ball back at their  own 12, 3:46 to go. And on the very first play, Manning threw an absolutely perfect pass to Manningham on a sideline go route. There were only inches to spare, but Manningham seized the ball out of midair, got possession instantly and got his feet down inbounds at midfield a fraction of a second before the free safety smashed him out of bounds. The 38-yard pass was the longest play of the game. Belichick was forced to challenge the ruling, which cost him a timeout that cost the Pats 45 seconds. That play was the backbreaker, but the Pats could still win if they could stop Manning and his playmakers. They couldn’t. Manning hit Hakeem Nicks, and the Giants quickly moved into field goal range and picked up a critical first down.

The Patriots, facing death by clock, allowed Ahmad Bradshaw to score. They got a break when Bradshaw failed to kneel down before crossing the goal line, but they were now facing extremely long odds with less than a minute left. Brady managed to move them to midfield, close enough to throw a Hail Mary on the last play of the game. Breathtakingly, Gronkowski almost gathered in the deflected pass – a fitting end to a great, well-played game between two evenly matched teams.

For the deserving, never-say-die Giants, their excellent coach Tom Coughlin and their cool quarterback Manning, who outplayed one of the game’s masters in the clutch and now owns one more ring than his more celebrated older brother, this victory moves them into elite company: the Giants are now tied with the Green Bay Packers with four Super Bowl wins, behind only Pittsburgh (six), San Francisco and Dallas (five each). For the Patriots, still stuck on three victories, it is the bitterest of defeats, not least because it is a déjà vu all over again. For fans, it was one of the better Super Bowls, one with its own unique, unrelenting, frustrating tension.

In cultural matters, i.e., the broadcast’s insanely expensive ads, a highly optimistic, genteely Dionysian and extremely sexualized view of reality prevailed. Viewers learned that Chevrolet Silverado trucks can make the Apocalypse go away, which is really cool! Also, if you buy one of those upgraded Fiat “Little Mice” whose tiny predecessors introduced thousands of postwar Italian men to impossible Kama Sutra positions, an outrageous babe will sexually torture you. Come to think of it, a similar babe, actually a whole bikini lineup of augmented babes, comes with every Kia. Also, the end of Prohibition was a really, really rockin’ national party, attended by the most clean-cut people in the most anodyne town imaginable, who at ad’s end are about to get shitfaced, but really politely and without any alteration of their consciousness.

Plus, the ads made it clear that all Americans must accept living “happily” in a David Foster Wallace dystopia in which everything, including the years, is sponsored. Detroit the city is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Chrysler. The automaker ran a deeply creepy “Motor City is firing again” ad that featured, among other sentimental and offensive inanities, an absurd attack on “partisans” waving generic signs. The whole weird spot, which never mentioned cars until the very end and seemed to go on forever, was narrated by Clint Eastwood, who should be profoundly ashamed.  There was also a bizarre ad in which Budweiser and GE merged into a scary, mutually self-congratulating double-headed monstrosity for no apparent reason.

Enjoy tomorrow’s BudweiserTM Monday, everyone!

It must have been an especially bitter defeat for the Ravens because they had played the Patriots to a standstill. In fact, they would have won the game had receiver Lee Evans been able to hold onto a pass in the end zone for another split-second, before New England backup defensive back Sterling Moore poked it out. On a night when Tom Brady had a subpar game – “I sucked pretty bad today,” he said – Baltimore had a golden opportunity to make it to the Super Bowl. The opportunity, for aging legends like Ray Lewis and Ed Reed, may never come again.

But the biggest goat horns belonged to San Francisco 49er return man Kyle Williams, who made not one but two critical mistakes that basically cost the 49ers the game. His first miscue took place midway through the fourth quarter, with the 49ers leading the New York Giants 14-10 and about to get the ball back. It was not only a game-changing play, it was one of the weirder instant replays I’ve ever seen.

As a Steve Weatherford punt landed in front of him and began bouncing toward him, Williams was torn between trying to field it, saving valuable yards of field position, and playing it safe by getting away from it. His indecision only lasted half a second, but it cost him and his team dearly. The ball ticked almost imperceptibly off his knee, and the Giants recovered it as he froze, desperately trying to look like he just happened to be walking by the bank when the vault exploded and a large wad of banknotes flew into his unwilling hands. The officiating crew on the field ruled that it was 49ers ball; the Giants challenged the call. The slow-motion replays were inconclusive, leading 49er fans like me to briefly hope that a saving cloud of epistemological murk had descended, a Nietzschean universe in which there were no facts, only interpretations. But then perspectivism was refuted: A regular-speed replay from a different angle clearly showed the ball touching his knee.

That was odd enough – normally the full-speed shots are more ambiguous, not less — but the really odd thing was Williams’ reaction. If he knew that the ball had touched him – which he may not have – did he really think he could get away with feigning innocence? The all-seeing eye of Sauron was going to find him out and shoot him down. His nothing-to-see-here, keep-moving reaction was understandable, but it somehow seemed like trying to hide under the bed when a drone has launched a missile at you.

That mishandled punt led to a Giants touchdown. And then, in overtime, Williams fumbled while returning another punt. The Giants recovered and kicked the winning field goal.

Williams’ 49er teammates all told him to keep his head up, that he hadn’t lost the game. Quarterback Alex Smith said that the real reason the 49ers lost was that they couldn’t convert on thirddown: They were an abysmal one for 13, and that one was a meaningless quasi-Hail Mary at the end of the first half that the Giants conceded. The solidarity Williams’ teammates showed was admirable, and in the great scheme of things they’re right that one player doesn’t lose a game. If the 49ers’ mediocre wide receivers had ever gotten open, if the 49ers’ coaches had stayed with what had been an effective rushing attack toward the end of the game instead of inexplicably deciding to pass on every down, if they had overcome their aversion to calling screens and swing passes, Williams’ boo-boos might not have mattered.

But those flaws are integral to the 49ers. All year long, they struggled to convert thirddowns and score in the red zone. Alex Smith has taken most of the blame for these failings, and he deserves some of it. But so do his receivers. And so do the 49er coaches, who have devised a highly creative running game but whose passing schemes are strikingly ineffective.

The 49ers lived all year on great defense – this year’s version is right up there with the great defenses in the glory years led by Ronnie Lott – and above all by not making mistakes. They tied an all-time NFL record for the lowest number of turnovers, with 10. But this means they have no margin for error. Until they put some electricity in their passing game, they have to play flawless football to beat a first-rate, well-rounded team like the Giants. And that isn’t going to happen every time.

I was bummed that Alex Smith’s redemption story did not have a Hollywood ending. Although he didn’t have a great game – the fact that his 97.6 quarterback rating was higher than Eli Manning’s 82.3 shows how little those ratings can mean – he played well enough this year to have convinced all but the most obdurate that he is not the 49ers’ problem.

Still, even taking into account how bad the 49ers’ receivers are compared to the Giants’ lethal trio of wideouts, the contrast between Manning and Smith in this game was striking.

Manning simply played at a higher level. Under heavy pressure in the second half, he managed to find open receivers time and again, whether on outlet patterns or downfield. His accuracy was remarkable for a game played in terrible weather. And even when he was being smashed to the ground, he kept his poise. No quarterback in the league is playing better than he is right now.

All four teams were remarkably closely matched; both games could have gone either way. But in the end the two best teams from each conference are going to the Super Bowl. And just as the matchup between the Giants and the 49ers became more intriguing after Alex Smith won last week’s legendary shoot-out with Drew Brees, so the matchup between the Patriots and the Giants has become a lot more interesting after the Patriots showed they could actually play defense against the Ravens. Defensive tackle Vince Wilfork had a monster game, and the Patriots’ secondary managed to hang in there against Anquan Boldin and Torrey Smith. Also, Brady is not going to lay an egg two games in a row.

It’s a case of the team with the mojo going against the team with the maestro. With considerable hesitation, I’m going with the maestro. Patriots 24, Giants 21.

A personal postmortem, now that my team has been eliminated. Defeat is bitter wormwood. I’d forgotten how bitter.

It has been many years since I’d really felt anything, good or bad, about the 49ers. The team sucked and I got used to being disappointed. The glory days felt like they took place in another lifetime – and in a way they did. I shut my expectations down. And my emotions.

Then this amazing season reawakened something. And when the 49ers pulled off that victory for the ages last week against the Saints, it all came back. I felt the delirious joy I, and the city, felt the first time, and every time, the 49ers won the Super Bowl. I remembered the shouts of joy echoing across rooftops on Nob Hill, and the old black man on the corner of Broadway and Columbus doing a funny little dance and saying to everyone who went by, “Who said Joe ain’t bad?” Like a woman who can only remember the joy of giving birth and has blocked out the excruciating pangs of labor, I conveniently forgot the agony of all the losses – Billy “White Shoes” Johnson’s last-second catch in Atlanta, the Don Beebe dagger, Roger Craig’s fumble against the Giants, the phantom pass-interference call against Eric Wright against the Redskins.

But when the 49ers walked off the field Sunday with their heads down, in front of a sad, silent crowd, 30 years’ worth of bad old memories came rushing back. As I drove through the empty streets, the city’s collective sorrow seemed almost tangible, like the weeping sky. It, and I, had gone from ecstasy to misery in one week. I wondered for a moment if it was worth it.

But I only wondered that for a moment. This had been a wondrous season, a gift. Yes, it ended in heartbreak. But I would rather feel heartbreak than nothing. In sports, as in life, it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

Occupy’s first act, the Tent Phase, ended in early December, when city authorities raided its urban camp at Justin Herman Plaza near the Ferry Building. But even before the tents were removed, it had become clear that the movement needed both to develop new tactics and deepen its strategic vision.

“After the raid, when our attention was no longer focused on [the encampment], people turned back to their neighborhoods and their campuses,” said David Solnit, who is part of a direct action working group associated with Occupy SF. “We started Occupy Bernal Heights [a multi-ethnic, mixed-income neighborhood on the edge of the Mission District], and we had 65 people at the first meeting. We went door to door meeting folks facing foreclosures. We got meetings with mid-level people at Wells Fargo Bank.”

Solnit – who is the brother of San Francisco writer Rebecca Solnit – said that OccupySF Housing, a housing-related spinoff of the movement, had held marches in four neighborhoods and succeeded in saving four homes from foreclosure.

“We’re more diversified now, but more powerful than when all our eggs were in one basket,” Solnit said. “Gene Sharp came up with 198 different methods of nonviolent action. Camping out is one tactic. We still have 197 more tactics to go through, and another 500 to create.”

At 6:20 a.m., in pitch darkness, with a miserable rain pelting down in front of the enormous 52-story monolith of 555 California, it seemed like a good idea for Occupy to come up with a new tactic immediately. The schedule on the Occupy Wall St. West web site  had announced that there would be a wacky 6 a.m. protest against Goldman Sachs, featuring a squid fry (“bring your own frying pan”) and protesters dressed as squids. (The squid theme derived from Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi’s famous description of Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”) But no one seemed to be giving out fried calamari – not that anyone could have digested it at that ungodly hour — and there were only four protesters standing near the entrance. They were dwarfed by a phalanx of waiting police and TV journalists.

The last person you would expect to find standing in a bedraggled squid costume in front of a financial district skyscraper at six in the morning would be a 69-year-old retired psychology professor. But the Occupy movement is full of surprises. The human squid, Eleanor Levine, said, “I’m out here to bring attention to the irresponsible financial practices of Goldman Sachs. I also want to bring attention to the concept of corporate personhood [which was behind the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United]. Corporations are not people. This company played a role in bringing not just the country but the world to financial ruin. People have to face up to what Goldman Sachs has done. Their CEO made $28 million.” Asked if the dreadful weather had prevented more people from joining the protest, Levine said calmly, “Yes, the rain put a damper on the turnout, but more will come.” Her pink tentacles waving, she walked cheerfully off.

I approached a mustachioed man in a yellow poncho inscribed with the words “Money 4 Housing and Education, not 4 Banks and Corporations.” Alex Carlson, 34, was a paramedic who said the biggest reason he came out was to protest America’s lack of educational opportunities. “I couldn’t get into school just to get an EMI license. I had to beg a teacher to let me into his class. Nursing was my real goal, but there’s no money for nursing schools. It’s crazy because there’s a nursing shortage and there’s going to be a crisis of care when the bay boomers die off.”

Carlson said he had come out at the crack of dawn in the rain because he felt he had to.

“Like everyone else I’m just trying to carve out a little life for myself, but my knife is getting shorter and shorter,” he said. “I’m not a crazy activist person. I have a wife and a young son. Camping out isn’t an option for me. But I was able to come out today, so I did. And I’m proud.”

I walked down a block to a building housing Wells Fargo, where people protesting the bank’s role in the national foreclosure crisis had chained themselves in front of the entrances on all four sides. In one of the entrances, about eight people were squeezed in, their arms inside big yellow PVC pipes that were connected together. A policeman came up and politely informed them they were creating a public health risk and would be arrested if they didn’t leave. Dozens of police waited on the corner.

A woman with a bullhorn shouted slogans. A wildly energetic street band, three saxes, a trumpet, a big bass drum and a snare, played surreally cheerful Kurt Weill-like tunes, their vaguely Weimar sound oddly appropriate.

A fresh-faced young woman with glasses was sitting among the crowd in the entrance, with a sign that said “Give us our homes back.” I asked her why she was there. “My parents had their home in Southern California foreclosed,” she said. Her said her name was Sarah Lombardo and she was 28 years old. “They couldn’t make their payments because of medical costs. My mom had breast cancer and my dad had a stroke. They were told to leave in two weeks and our house was auctioned off. Now they’re living in an apartment, but their credit was destroyed so they had to pay three times the normal deposit.”

Lombardo said her mom was a purchasing agent and her dad was a factory worker. “I’m the first one in my family to go to college.” She said she came out because she wanted “to put a face to the statistics.” It was a face that looked like it belonged to the girl next door, or to your daughter.

She said that now that she had finished college, it made it possible for her to be arrested. “It’s for a good cause.”

I asked her if she had ever been arrested before. “No.” Was she afraid? “No, I’m not scared.”

Later, behind a cordon of police, I watched as protesters on the north side of the building were arrested, frisked and loaded into a paddy wagon. I rode off on my bike to cover some more actions. When I came back, Lombardo and the rest of the group of people in the doorway had been arrested.

Back up at 555 California, beyond the big turd-in-a-plaza artwork jokingly called the “banker’s heart,” I came upon an older man in a suit, carrying a sign that said “Give Us Our City Back.” I was intrigued: he was definitely not the usual Occupy protester. But when I asked him who he was, he turned out to be even more unusual than I could have expected. He was Warren Langley, the 69-year-old former head of the Pacific Stock Exchange.

What brought a man with his background out to protest?

“I was in the industry. I worked for an option trading firm that was sold to Goldman Sachs. So I played the game on the other side. But I have two grandkids and two daughters, and I became increasingly concerned that their future wouldn’t offer them the same opportunities that I had as a young man. The income inequities in our society are a huge problem.”

Langley said he first heard about the Occupy movement from his pal Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. “He was scooping ice cream for them in New York. And he told me, ‘These are the real deal.’ So one day I was eating lunch at the Ferry Building, and I walked across the street to the camp and started talking to these young people. And they were the real deal. They’re folks who lost their jobs, or are just out of school and can’t get a job. I could bring my credibility to the movement, so I decided to get involved.”

Langley decried the deregulation of the financial industry, in particular the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act that eroded the wall between banks and investment houses and gave birth to the wild, insanely profitable speculation

that ultimately dealt the world’s economy a devastating blow. “They bet our money and then we paid off the bookmaker.”

I asked Langley what his former colleagues in high finance thought about the Occupy Movement.

“Well, there are some who say, ‘They’re a bunch of whiners and need to get a job.’ But those are the ones who haven’t actually talked to the people in the movement. There are others who are more open-minded. I know one guy, very wealthy, who told me, ‘What’s their plan? I’m ready to give them $250,000 if they have a plan.’ And I told him, ‘It’s not their job to give you a plan. They’re hurting.’ So whether it’s job opportunities, or better health care, or fairer taxes, we need through the political system to come up with a plan. It isn’t their job. He didn’t get it. But his kids, who are also very wealthy, were more sympathetic. It’s a generational thing.”

Langley went on to say that Occupy was sharpening its ideas. “It’s moving to get a more specific message across, from ‘We’re hurting’ to “This is what’s hurting us.’ He said he didn’t see the Occupy movement ever aligning with any political party. “Chuck Schumer does as much damage as John Boehner. In the end, it’s about occupying people’s minds, so people who aren’t down here will see that the system is not fair.

There was also a nurse-led protest across town against the big medical group California Pacific Medical Center, which RN Jane Sandoval said is shifting resources away from poorer patients. Another nurse, Eileen Prendiville, said CMPC is emblematic of America’s broken, for-profit health care system, even though it is nominally a non-profit.

If the new Occupy is meatier and more substantive, it still thrives on spectacle and encounters with authority– and the latter can be a double-edged sword. After one nasty encounter outside 555 California when a young guy who engaged in a scuffle with the cops when they rushed forward was arrested, quite a few people in the crowd began shouting “fuck you, pigs!”, “you slaves!”, “pigs go home!” and “your warrant is to serve your corporate masters” to the police, probably not winning any hearts and minds in the process. No one told them to can the Black Panther rhetoric. At the same time, in one of those weird juxtapositions that Occupy specializes in, across the street stood two gentle souls holding a big black banner that read, “Buddhist Peace and Justice League: May All Beings Be Happy and Secure.”

Based on Friday’s actions – which I only saw part of — Occupy’s new approach seems to have three components.

First, it has become more of a big-tent movement, welcoming outside groups like labor unions. Second, it is taking deliberate, loud, public aim at specific corporate targets, like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Perhaps most important, as David Solnit pointed out, it is reinventing itself as a grass roots organization – reaching out to ordinary people who may not know much about the Occupy movement, but whose lives have been devastated by anonymous corporate decisions.

It’s an ambitious, multi-faceted reset, and there’s no way of knowing how effective it will be. Simply camping out and saying “We are the 99 percent” has the downside of being vague, but for that very reason it has an abstract, jarring purity. More specific, targeted protests are more substantive and show the movement is serious, but also make it more conventional. Still, as long as the movement attracts followers as committed, intelligent and impressive as the people I talked to, it will remain a force to be reckoned with. It seems certain to play a role in the national discourse not just during this election season, but for a long time.

My team, the San Francisco 49ers, are channeling the ghosts of Joe Montana and Dwight Clark after coming back not once but twice in the last four minutes to beat the unstoppable New Orleans Saints in one of the most thrilling playoff games ever played. (Gloating and hubristic reminder: in my previous piece I called the 49ers to win 30-28. The final score: 49ers 36, Saints 32.)

The New England Patriots have the confident glow of an omnipotent serial killer with a medical degree after they surgically carved up the corpse of the 1958 Nebraska Cornhuskers, aka the Denver Broncos. The contrast between Tom Brady’s laser-like passes and Tim Tebow’s wishful heaves was excruciating, but there could be an upside to Tebow’s abysmal showing: It might switch Tebowmania from Christian triumphalism to Christian humility. (Slightly less gloating but still disturbingly hubristic reminder: I called it 31-17 for New England. The final score: Patriots 45, Broncos10.)

The Baltimore Ravens are feeling like the guy who went to Vegas with a $10 stake and came back with a million bucks after Houston Texans’ punt returner Jacoby Jones suffered the biggest brain-freeze since Jim Marshall’s wrong-way run in 1964, snatching clumsily at an erratically bouncing ball as two large, malevolent, and heavily muscled men approached him at full speed. Jones’ brain fart heard ‘round the world was the difference in the Nevermores’ triumph over the most balanced and dangerous team in the AFC. (Most gloating and hubristic reminder yet: I called it 24-14 Baltimore. The final score: Ravens 20, Texans 13.)

And the New York Giants can light up the most expensive Cohiba in the playoff humidor. Continuing their month-long hot streak, the boys in blue rolled up the defending champion Green Bay Packers as if they were an old, moth-eaten rug and placed them thoughtfully in cold storage for the winter. The Giants were helped by the fact that the Green Bay receivers appeared to mistake the football for an incoming hand grenade, but they would have whupped on the flat, stale and unprofitable Pack anyway. Besides, any team that cannot knock down a Hail Mary pass does not deserve to repeat as champions. (Spoiler alert: Do not read the next sentence unless you want this column’s shocking and dramatic ending, namely that I have no idea what I’m talking about, prematurely revealed. I called Packers 28-21. Final score: 37-20, Giants. Hey, that’s why they call it hubris!)

The NFC championship game looks more compelling than the AFC game. The Ravens-Patriots game is another one of those irresistible force vs. immovable object matchups that the NBA, I mean the NFL, is filled with this year, now that thanks to insanely great quarterback play, superb receivers and the best crop of tight ends in league history, playing D is no longer necessary to win. The Patriots’ defense is so bad that the Ravens have a chance, but Baltimore’s offense looked so constipated against Houston – although to be fair, Houston’s tough defense had a lot to do with that – and Brady and gang looked so sharp, that it is hard to imagine Baltimore going into Foxboro and coming away with a win.

No team in the league can match up with the Patriots’ tight ends, Gronkowski and Hernandez, and there’s no reason to think the Ravens can. To win, the Ravens are going to have to put a lot more pressure on Brady than they did on Houston rookie QB T.J. Yates — who would actually have played quite well if someone had told him that there is a position in football called “free safety.” Ferocious Baltimore linebacker Terrell Suggs, who was mostly invisible during the game, will have to materialize against the Patriots. The Ravens’ less-than-dynamic offense should be able to put up points against the feeble New England defense, but not enough.

Prediction: 24-17, Patriots.

The NFC championship game should be a classic. The Giants are on top of their game right now. They had a great defensive scheme against Green Bay; even though they didn’t generate much pressure from their defensive line, their coverage downfield was so good that Aaron Rodgers couldn’t get into one of his insane rhythms. In that way, the Giants resemble the 49ers, who make opposing teams earn every yard, although the 49ers have a better run defense and a slightly better defense overall.

On offense, the edge goes to the Giants, with Eli Manning playing like his big brother and the scary wide receiver trio of Manningham, Hicks and Cruz. By contrast, the 49ers are thin at wideouts. But as the Saints found out, blazingly-fast tight end Vernon Davis poses a severe matchup problem, and running back Frank Gore, even though he seems to be playing hurt, is a bigger threat than Ahmad Bradshaw or Brandon Jacobs. And although it may seem like a ridiculous thing to say after they gave up 462 yards to Drew Brees, the 49ers secondary is playing lights out.

Prediction: 24-20, 49ers.

Part of the reason I like the 49ers is their defense and their kicking game, and of course home-field advantage. But the real reason is Alex Smith.

I know, that’s weird, verging on commitable. Taking Smith over Manning? No one could seriously argue that Smith has achieved even a fraction of what Manning has. But Smith is an X-factor. He is poised to confound his doubters and shock the world. Like he just did.

Saturday’s game, which I attended, etched itself into 49ers lore for a whole bunch of reasons. There was the performance of the defense, holding the potent Saints at bay for those agonizingly long stretches when the 49ers offense struggled. There was Vernon Davis, weeping without shame in the arms of coach Jim Harbaugh after catching the winning pass, a strong man reduced by relief and gratitude and utter emotional exhaustion to his naked human essence, his dissolving face one of the most moving things I’ve ever seen in sports. But what made this game the stuff of legends was the performance of Alex Smith.

Smith has been reviled ever since he put on a 49er uniform. Virtually no one in the Bay Area, including the fans and the so-called “experts,” ever believed in him. The fans have come around some now, but the bandwagon is still not exactly crowded. I saw thousands of Montana and Willis and Young and Lott jerseys in the stadium Saturday. If there were any Alex Smith jerseys, I missed them. As for the rest of the country, fuggedaboutit. New York Post football writer Mark Cannizzaro’s appraisal of Smith (issued just before Smith and the 49ers beat the Giants this year) is typical: “Alex Smith cannot beat you…Here’s the reality about Smith: He is who he has always been since he came into the league as the 49ers’ first-round draft pick in 2005 — a mediocre quarterback.” My own friends derided me for standing up for the guy.

Finally given a real coach and a consistent system, Smith had a remarkable renaissance this year. And then, on Saturday, at the biggest moment in his career, with everything on the line, he came through – and he did it not once but twice. To hang in there for six years, working hard every day, tuning out the doubters, with no one except the guys in the locker room believing you can succeed, takes more than talent. It takes character.

When Smith threw that last perfect pass and Davis caught it just before Roman Harper leveled him just over the goal line, and he held on to the football and got to his feet, Candlestick Park went crazy. Amid all the shouting and screaming, I looked over to a young woman sitting to my left. She was weeping, her head bent, tears running down her face. At that moment I realized that she, like many of the fans in the stadium, like my 23-year-old son who called me up in breathless, disbelieving joy after the game, had not even been alive when Joe Montana and Dwight Clark launched the 49er dynasty 30 years ago.

For her, the memories I had of The Catch, of Young and Lott and Craig and all the rest of the great players and teams of the past, of five Super Bowls and years of happiness, were only legends, replays on TV. Alex Smith and Vernon Davis had given her a priceless gift: her own memories. I think that’s why she was crying. And whether the 49ers win next week or not, they can’t take that away from her.