Karen Heller: We're drawn to the drama

Do you know that ex-Eagle Donovan McNabb squares off against his old team and former protege Michael Vick at 4:15 Sunday?

Of course you do. That's because this has been the dominant story of the off-season, the preseason, the nascent season, basically the only story, drowning out all else.

The Phillies clinched their fourth consecutive NL East title? Fantastic. But that team doesn't provide the theatrics, the agita, the unmitigated dysfunction, the six months of unbridled Barcalounger speculation that launched a thousand sports columns, call-in shows, and fantasy scenarios since Easter, when McNabb was traded to the hapless Redskins of D.C.

(One way the 'Skins do excel: Owner Dan Snyder is far more detested than Jeff Lurie.)

"Honestly, I think I will be more cheered," McNabb, showing how little he understands the rabidity of Birds fans, said last week of his coming reception, the possible Stink at the Linc.

"No matter what the situation is, right now I'm with a different team, and it's a rival, and it wasn't my choice."

No, it wasn't. But that's not the narrative Philadelphians chose to embrace. Instead of being traded, McNabb's a traitor, the enemy, the guy we never quite loved.

Sure, he led the team to five NFC championship games, but McNabb failed to deliver the Birds to the promised land by scoring the Lombardi Trophy.

You're either an Eagle or you're against us.

People crave a dramatic story. Doesn't matter if it's true, only that it's convincing and passionate. Frankly, Vick is precisely the quarterback Philadelphia deserves - colorful, dramatic, troubled, never dull.

Sports is one of the few areas where outcomes can't be managed. It's why fans love their teams, riding the emotional roller coaster, following the opera of another season.

Yet, ironically, there's been an increasing necessity to force a narrative onto the unknown. Listen every week as national sportscasters, from the first quarter, attempt to script the outcome, favoring whichever team comes charging out of the gate first, as if observers can manage the story. Newspapers, which trade in fact, nonetheless predict outcomes before Sunday.

Political races, no matter how much money you throw at them, can't be scripted, either. That's why campaign junkies are drawn to elections, which offer the chance for everyday drama, for upsets that thwart conventional wisdom.

In politics, a miscalculated sound bite or past blunder can shift voter support, or induce a shrug. Yet this possibility doesn't stop political handicappers, the massive punditeria, from attempting to control the story. They try to predict the outcome, beginning with a never-ending stream of polls analyzed months before elections.

Increasingly, it's the outsize characters and oddball narratives that drive coverage and spur voter interest, rather than the issues and the quality of the resumes.

I blame Sarah Palin for this. I blame Sarah Palin for almost everything, but much of the fault lies with journalists' increasing rapture with the freaks, the sideshow, the money quote. We look for the story that will attract overwhelmed and distracted Americans who are dealing with too much, including too much information in a noisy arena.

Subsequently, it's the extremes, on both sides, the outsize characters bordering on fiction who attract the buzz, the very people who have no business running for higher office in the first place.

That's why we keep covering Delaware Republican U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell - last week, the New York Times went looking and couldn't find her on the campaign trail - instead of her solid, stolid competitor, Chris Coons.

That's why New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino blows up as buzz, with the revelation of a love child he tucks in nightly and his threat to a New York Post reporter that "I'll take you out, buddy." So Paladino becomes the story, though Democrat Andrew Cuomo is anywhere from 6 to 16 points ahead, depending on the poll.

That's why no one pays attention to Pennsylvania's gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races. We have four men with serious credentials but no sizzle, no WWF fortune, no love child, no position on witchcraft.

In both races, the candidates have markedly different views on the issues and agree on almost nothing - except addressing each other by their first names and, for now, observing a modicum of civility. Yet most voters can't tell them apart, and, worse, few care.

Instead, whichever public figure makes the most noise wins the coverage sweepstakes. This brings us, I'm sad to say, to our local winner, John Street.

After doing a thoroughly inept job as chair of the Philadelphia Housing Authority board, revealing complete ignorance about Carl Greene's tyrannical leadership, Street turns around and uses this failure as a bully pulpit to mouth off about . . . his successor in City Hall. He tells The Inquirer's Paul Davies that Michael Nutter "is not a black mayor. He's just a mayor with dark skin."

Instead of supporting Nutter in the next mayoral election, Street is courting Sam Katz, who, if elected - correct me if I'm wrong - would not be a black mayor. Over Nutter he favors Tom Knox, who wouldn't be a black mayor, either, but would likely be a terrible one. Three years ago, Knox ran on the platform that he was once very poor and is now very rich.

We feast on the fat of excess. We're in no mood to diet. "Now, It's War," the Daily News declared of this Sunday's game when it's no such thing.

We want a narrative we can control, indelible characters, and big drama, as long as it's not our own.