Prince? PRINCE?

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• Prince? As the Superbowl halftime show? What was the NFL thinking?

• Prince? The artist formerly known as &*$%(!@?

• How many of the 75,000 ticket holders and 1.3 gazillion television viewers, do you think, can name even one song by &*$%(!@?

• Zero, would be the answer to that.

• Let me understand the thinking: Two years ago, Paul McCartney. Last year, the Rolling Stones. This year … &*$%(!@?

• What.

• The year before Sir Paul, the halftime show featured Janet Jackson making a clean breast of things but I missed that as I was in Baghdad where halftime came on at about three in the morning and Janet could have mentioned me by name and it wouldn’t have stirred me from my cot.

• Prince sang one song which sounded to me like Little Richard in that Geico commercial: “Cranberries! Stuffing! OOOOOOOOHHHH!!!!”

• And “Proud Mary?” Give me Tina Turner. Even if she is 67 years old.

• Maybe &*$%(!@ is really hot in Borneo where the NFL wants to generate local interest.

• Pending that, I would recommend that the Superbowl halftime show be a reprise of all the ads from the first half that men of a certain age missed because they needed to use the break in the action on the field to … you know.

• For my money, I think it would be swell if the halftime show were split evenly between the Kingston Trio and Andy Williams.

• Don’t you agree that ad agencies are now trying way, WAY too hard to be THE Superbowl commercial that everyone talks about on Monday morning?

• Speaking of which, I think that if a candidate for President wanted to guarantee election he (or she or &*$%(!@) would promise to make the Monday after the Superbowl a national holiday.

• Enough about the halftime show. Let’s get to the real stuff: The race for the Democrat(ic) nomination for President.

• Here’s my take as of the first of February in the off-year: We are witnessing Hillary’s campaign at its zenith. Starting in Iowa last week she has been racing to the left on the Iraq situation and no one – NO one – thinks she truly believes a single thing she has said in the past two weeks.

• Last week Barak Obama spoke at George Mason University, just outside Washington, DC, to perhaps 3,000 students who were organized through a Facebook deal.