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This week on the A-List:

1. Two Black Coaches in AFC Wildcard Game; For the Black Man to Win, the Black Man Must Lose!
Once upon a time the A-List had a white friend, a genial young man from La Jolla, CA who dreamed of becoming a doctor and helping folks of every hue. Our friendship grew and grew and grew, until one day it reached the ultimate stage of bonding: we decided to watch the Super Bowl together, specifically the 1988 XXII contest where the Washington Redskins, led by Doug Williams, spanked the Denver Broncos and John Elway 42-10.

Now seeing how neither the A-List nor our white friend was from DC or Denver, our Super Bowl partner expected gameday to be a non-partisan affair, a gentlemanly idyll of appreciation for the sport that is football, but there the A-List was, making a whole lot noise and rooting for Williams and the Redskins like we had money on it. (Which we did, but that's another story.) At first our white friend was just perplexed, but as Williams threw his way to four touchdowns and 340 yards passing, as our celebrations grew more ecstatic, our taunting of Elway more cruel, his confusion got the better of him.

"But why," our white friend wanted to know. "Why are you rooting for the Redskins, A-List? They have a racist, anti-Native American mascot, and, moreover, you're from Queens, which used to be home of the JETS, at least until they moved from Shea Stadium to the Meadowlands."

"We hear you about the mascot," we replied, "and the A-List is indeed from Queens, onetime home of THE 1969 SUPERBOWL CHAMPION NEW YORK JETS. But the thing is that the Redskins have a black quarterback, a black quarterback who's about to win a Super Bowl, an MVP, and the trip to Disney."

"But if I rooted for Denver just because they had a white quarterback I'd be a racist."

"Exactly," we explained. "You'd be a racist and worse: you'd be typical. You'd be sitting there cheering for business as usual. But us, we're cheering for not just for the race, but for history in the making."

"But there must black people in Denver," said our dear, dear confused white friend after a long pause. "Who are they rooting for?"

At the time we didn't give his question much thought, at least not until recently, when the stage was set for this Sunday's upcoming AFC Wildcard game between the NEW YORK JETS and the Indianapolis Colts. As history-in-the-making would have it, both teams are coached by African American men -- the gritty, valiant, heroic, AFC Champion JETS by Herman Edwards, the wildcard Colts by Tony Dungy. In the NFL's modern era, there have only been five black coaches: Edwards and Dungy, as well as Art Shell, Dennis Green and Ray Rhodes. Edwards and Dungy aren't just part of a tiny black coaching fraternity, though. Like the A-List and its white friend, they're also buds, Edwards having apprenticed under Dungy as an assistant while Dungy was head coach at Tampa Bay. To complete the picture, the pair are also part of the even smaller fraternity of NFL coaches who fall under the press-defined category of "nice guys." Dungy and Edwards are invariably described as so upbeat, so positive and decent that the back channel assumption must that they're slightly soft (or barring that, some kind of Bible-thumpers). In the build-up to the playoffs, everyone from the NY dailies to ESPN has latched onto the "nice, black...and friends!" angle, pairing pictures of the happy-but-competitive couple with breathless prose to the effect that with guys like Dungy and Edwards there are no losers.

Of course, those of us who live in the real world know that for there to be a winner there must be a loser, and that, furthermore, there's something invariably truly and deeply wrong with the loser, who loses not just because the other team was "better," but because they were "worse" and, in some way, likely evil. In that moral universe, a black-on-black coaching collision like the JETS-Colts game should present the kind of philosophical problem hinted at by our white friend, but fortunately this isn't a fantasy football match-up between Dennis Green's Vikings and Art Shell's Raiders. This is JETS-Colts, and to tell the whole, honest, unvarnished truth, Indianapolis could be coached by Malcolm X, with MLK as offensive coordinator and Harriet Tubman calling D, and the A-List would still root for the JETS, because, you see, we're from Queens. And you likely don't know what it was like growing up in that most terrible of boroughs, finding yourselves fans of a troubled team, the roots of your allegiance lost in the mists of childhood and your entire sports history reducible to little more than ancestral mutterings about a brash, mythical prince named "Broadway" whose most immediately discernable legacy isn't the single, long-ago trophy (or the street) but all those long, unbroken years of defeat.

To be a JETS fan is to learn how to pick out the tantalizing highlight produced against a backdrop of abjection, the occasional monster game by Ken O'Brien or The Sack Exchange or Freeman McNeil, a thing of beauty whose perfection lay in the fact that it was always marred by the rest of the team's numbers and the record and, lord help us!, the coaches, the Bruce Coslets and Rich Kotites who let us down year after year despite the pre-season promises of change. (And the less said of Bill Parcells the better, he who blustered into our lives Pat Riley-style, flashing all those rings, only to deliver nothing but heartbreak.) To be a JETS fan is to root for a team with no real home, to believe in the possibilities of a rag-tag, fugitive franchise whose only monument to the optimism that must have founded it is the linguistic flourish of a forward-propelled name, a team that win or lose plays in a stadium with someone else's logo on it. It's hard believing when all the world tells you your team is nothing, but what are you gonna do? You are who you are. Or more specifically, the A-List is who we are, and we've decided that if there's one thing being a JETS fan is akin to, with its peculiar mix of pride and loss, it's being black. So a black head coach leading the JETS into the playoffs against a black Colts coach isn't just a win-win for the race but a sign from heaven. It's okay if the rest of you don't understand what's happening, but when we win the Super Bowl, you will.

2. Opposition Wins in Kenya; Former Pres. Moi Leaves Inauguration Ceremony Early
A down year ended on a good note for East Africa, as Kenyans celebrated the swearing-in of a new president, and possibly of a whole new political era. Mwai Kibaki, leader of an opposition ticket, swept into office in the wake of departing, 24-year president Daniel Arap Moi, defeating Moi's handpicked successor Uhuru Kenyatta -- who, despite having the most blackest, most militant name in all creation, was, reportedly, a bit of an empty suit. In Nairobi Monday, huge crowds shouted, "no more bribes!" as Kibaki took control of a country that's lost an estimated $870 million a year to corruption from 1990 to 1997. It's a hell of a challenge, but the A-List wishes him the best. Meantime, we got a kick out of reading about the inauguration, at which everyday Kenyans felt free to satisfy their deep loathing of outgoing president Moi, shouting, heckling and throwing so much clumped mud at him that he reportedly left the ceremony early (no doubt to look into classes at BU's school for former African, uhm, "leaders").

3. Do You Know Where You're Going to?
Another day, another diva caught-up in an (alleged!) down-market drinkin' and druggin' debacle. According to published reports, Diana Ross was arrested at 12:30 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 30 in Tucson Arizona, after another driver reported a vehicle swerving all over the road while going south in northbound lanes. Police tracked the car to a handicapped parking space in the parking lot of a video store, where they found a visibly confused Ross, 58, who claimed to have gotten lost while driving to rent a movie. (We don't know what's more sad: the bad driving, the misappropriation of the handicapped parking space, or the spectacle of Diana Ross showing up at Blockbusters all bleeped-up and clutching a VHS copy of Mahogany.) Those dear friends of the race at The New York Post published Ross' police report, which detailed that while Ross agreed to a sobriety test, she failed the bonus portions devoted to alphabet-reciting (missing several letters and repeating "c" multiple times), and one-leg-standing (she fell down and laughed when asked to count to ten). We don't know about y'all but this definitely sounds like a case of DWBFD -- driving while black famous and tipsy -- to us!

4. The Fact of Life Is That Ex-Stars Need Love, Too
Kim Fields is making her dating debut on a new show called Star Dates, on the E! Channel. Grafting two reality trends into one unholy, hybrid monster, Star Dates attempts to capture celebrities in their natural habitat by having them go out on blind dates with...(inhale) normal people (gasp!). Despite our fear that our beloved Tootie would make a complete and utter fool of herself, she's been deemed "celeb of the week" by E! teevee. Show previews, though, tell a different story, as she was apparently matched up with a date so insufficiently educated in Fields' oeuvre that he tried to praise her by saying how much he enjoyed In Living Color. Uh-oh, looks like "there's gonna be trouble!"

5. Conflict Diamonds: They're Not Just for African Terrorists Anymore
Charles Taylor is crazy -- like a fox. We don't exactly believe every top-secret intelligence report that comes out of Babylon (the A-List is a font of well-honed skepticism, as you well know), but this one has a particular, shall we say, ring of truth: the Washington Post is reporting that a year-long European investigation has found that Taylor's Liberia and neighboring West African nation Burkina Faso both harbored al Qaeda operatives who were raising money by cornering the region's diamond market. For his troubles, Taylor received an alleged $1 million gift, while al Qaeda bought up an estimated $20 million in stones (bling bling, indeed). Two big questions remain: what's al Qaeda gonna do with all their profits? And, how's that ring on your finger feeling right about now? The pretty, shiny one, with the blood dripping from it? Forget those BS PSAs about weed-smoking teenagers funding terrorism. The true bankrollers of terror are sitting in millions of gas-guzzling SUVs at this very moment, stuck in traffic, and admiring the deadly sparkle that comes off their hands when they turn the wheel.

6. Sonny Carson Dies, But the Fighting Continues
The 66-year-old Carson, who fathered both X-Clan's Professor X (born Lumumba Carson) and the term "street activist," died December 20, 2002 after spending two months in a heart-attack-induced coma. Carson is probably best remembered by most non-New Yorkers as the subject of the colorful, urban biography and 1974 bio-pic The Education of Sonny Carson. In the New York City press, though, his legacy has come up for grabs, as those who regard the Brooklyn firebrand as a venerable leader face off against those who only remember him as an amplifier of New York's ethnic tensions, most notably during the Korean grocer boycott of 1990 and the Crown Heights riot. Angered by the consistently ugly image painted of Carson, his family banned mainstream media outlets from his funeral, which prompted a series of unflattering, revenge obituaries about the deceased, particularly in the reactionary New York Post. As the A-List remembers him, Carson was a tireless defender of black people whose zealousness put him on the wrong side of a number of issues late in his career, but that's absolutely no cause to misrepresent his legacy or disrespect his grieving family.

7. In a Completely Unrelated, Non-Black Obituary, Another Legacy is Questioned
No, Virginia, there is no Bigfoot. A Washington State man by the name of Ray L. Wallace apparently made the footprints most commonly pointed to as proof of the monster's existence using giant, wooden, foot-shaped flip-flops. Wallace passed away last week and his children finally owed up to the hoax, this, 44 years after the 1958 footprinting spree that started the Bigfoot phenomenon. Who knew?

8. Rangel Calls for a New Military Draft
Before you start muttering about maps to Canada, faked "psycho" behavior and other commie-pinko, draft-dodger talk, consider this: a "volunteer" army is disproportionately black, brown and poor. A conscripted army is at least theoretically more democratic, as, barring abuse of exemptions, it draws equally from all classes -- and is therefore more likely to contain at least a few folks our elected representatives might conceivably know and miss. Harlem's own Charles Rangel, a US Congressman and decorated war vet (Korea) says that Congress might be less likely to blithely vote for war if its members' own sons and grandsons had a chance of seeing some action. His proposal doesn't stand a chance, but we can see where he's coming from -- nobody wants a war less than the parent (or lover/sibling/child) of a soldier.

9. Mandela Christmas Party Mayhem
Oh god, the children! The A-List is sad to report that the latest in a series of annual Christmas parties hosted by Nelson Mandela -- this one attended by our very own Oprah Winfrey! -- erupted into a stampede, as thousands of children pushed toward a pile of dolls and soccer balls brought for them by jolly ole Saint O. In a scene reminiscent of the K-Mart "disturbances" sparked in the 1980s by the Cabbage Patch Kids and the 1990s by Tickle Me Elmo, at least three children were injured; thankfully, nobody was killed. All of this merely confirms what the A-List has been saying (over drinks, into drinks, to drunks) for days now: thank God the holidays are over

That's it for this week A-List. Join us next week, same Africana Channel, same Africana time! And if you like the A-List, please do send it to a friend or two or seventeen. Forwarding articles is what makes the wide world web go round...

About the Author: Queens is the loneliest borough.