Early in the documentary “An Unreasonable Man,” it is noted that Ralph Nader is more likely to be remembered for his 2000 presidential campaign than for the decades of advocacy that preceded it. And the movie, an admiring but hardly uncritical portrait of Mr. Nader, confirms this suspicion by devoting nearly half of its more than two-hour running time to the 2000 election and its aftermath.

That event seems at once irrelevant and urgent, lost in the mists of pre-9/11 history and painfully topical. Certainly the passage of time has not cooled tempers or settled arguments. And so, much of the second half of “An Unreasonable Man,” directed by Steve Skrovan and Henriette Mantel (a former associate of Mr. Nader, she is also interviewed on camera), consists of talking heads talking past one another.

To liberal media critics like Eric Alterman and Todd Gitlin, Mr. Nader is “self-deluded,” “intellectually dishonest,” a “megalomaniac” and worse. His moral vanity, in their view (which is hardly theirs alone), cost Al Gore a decisive margin of victory over George W. Bush. Spoiling it for the Democrats, Mr. Nader’s detractors (among them some former allies) contend, was his intention all along.

This charge is disputed by members of his campaign staff, who also repeat his central claim that the Republicans and the Democrats are basically a two-headed corporate oligarchy, rather than genuinely distinct political forces.

The argument goes in circles, and while it makes for interesting, vexing viewing, it also throws the film somewhat off balance. The family quarrel on the American left that Mr. Nader’s candidacy continues to provoke threatens to overshadow the larger debates that his earlier career as a consumer advocate placed at the center of American civic life. These have to do with the power of corporations, the regulatory authority of government and the limits of the free market — issues that have hardly faded away, and that aren’t readily summed up in “Did so!”/”Did not!” back-and-forthing.

In promotional materials, “An Unreasonable Man” has the ungainly tagline “Ralph Nader: How Do You Define a Legacy?” — a question that Mr. Nader insists does not concern him in the least. While giving him and his supporters ample time to justify his run for the presidency, the filmmakers also seek to balance the historical ledger. Alongside those 97,000 contentious Florida votes, they suggest, must be reckoned the hundreds of thousands of lives saved by improvements in automobile safety, environmental protections and safeguards on consumer products, causes Mr. Nader and his colleagues championed for years.

His impact on these areas of modern life is the focus of the movie’s riveting first hour, which is as much the biography of a movement as the story of a single man. Not that there is much of a distinction: from the mid-1960s on, Mr. Nader’s cause was his life. His exposé of the “designed-in” dangers of the Chevrolet Corvair, published first in The New Republic (in articles written by James Ridgeway) and later in “Unsafe at Any Speed” were followed by Congressional hearings that brought both fame and influence. Money from a settlement with General Motors — which had hired private detectives to snoop around Mr. Nader’s personal life, something even his close associates doubt exists — became the seed for future advocacy and activism.

Mr. Nader attracted a cadre of young idealists whose approach to politics was both a product of the times and a departure from it. The point, as they saw it, was not to overthrow the system, but rather to bring it into line with its stated principles, a goal that was rational rather than romantic and pursued by means of research and reporting rather than demonstrations or direct actions.

For a while, especially during the Carter administration, Mr. Nader’s commitment to using the legal system and the apparatus of government to check the influence of corporations brought him into alliance with the Democratic Party. His subsequent entry into electoral politics is presented in the movie, persuasively enough, as a result of the fraying of this concord. Some degree of disappointment was probably inevitable. For better or for worse, the engine of democracy is compromise, and Mr. Nader is uncompromising to the very core of his being.

And “An Unreasonable Man,” a conventional collage of archival clips and retrospective interviews, works hard to do him justice. Its ideological leanings are evident and unsurprising, but more screen time for Mr. Nader’s pre-2000 (or pre-post-2000) adversaries would have made a richer film. As it is, the filmmakers and their interlocutors make much of Mr. Nader’s popularity with the American public in the 1970s, but seem unable to acknowledge that, in the next decade, much of that same public embraced Ronald Reagan, whose ascendancy is treated, with wearying predictability, as the result of elite conspiracy and public delusion.

The standoff over the 2000 presidential election is handled with a better feel for unresolved tensions and contradictions. To these must be added a curious and telling footnote. “An Unreasonable Man” was shown at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, alongside another documentary featuring Mr. Gore, Davis Guggenheim’s “Inconvenient Truth.” That movie, now contending for an Academy Award, is almost entirely about the challenges of the future. This one, for all its invocations of the progressive spirit, concerns itself mainly with the battles of the past.

The American Jewish Committee, an ardent defender of Israel, is known for speaking out against anti-Semitism, but this conservative advocacy group has recently stirred up a bitter and emotional debate with a new target: liberal Jews.

An essay the committee features on its Web site, ajc.org, titled ” ‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” says a number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent anti-Semitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist.

In an introduction to the essay, David A. Harris, the executive director of the committee, writes, “Perhaps the most surprising — and distressing — feature of this new trend is the very public participation of some Jews in the verbal onslaught against Zionism and the Jewish State.” Those who oppose Israel’s basic right to exist, he continues, “whether Jew or gentile, must be confronted.”

The essay comes at a time of high anxiety among many Jews, who are seeing not only a surge in attacks from familiar antagonists, but also gloves-off condemnations of Israel from onetime allies and respected figures, like former President Jimmy Carter, who titled his new book on the Mideast “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” By spotlighting the touchy issue of whether Jews are contributing to anti-Semitism, both admirers and detractors of the essay agree that it aggravates an already heated dispute over where legitimate criticism of Israel and its defenders ends and anti-Semitic statements begin.

The essay, written by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, an English professor and the director of the Institute for Jewish Culture and the Arts at Indiana University in Bloomington, castigates a number of people by name, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, the historian Tony Judt, the poet Adrienne Rich and the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, in addition to a number of academics.

Mr. Judt, whose views on Israel and the American Jewish lobby have frequently drawn fire, is chastised for what Mr. Rosenfeld calls “a series of increasingly bitter articles” that have “called Israel everything from arrogant, aggressive, anachronistic, and infantile to dysfunctional, immoral, and a primary cause of present-day anti-Semitism.”

A historian at New York University, Mr. Judt said in a telephone interview that he believed the real purpose of outspoken denunciations of him and others was to stifle harsh criticism of Israel. “The link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is newly created,” he said, adding that he fears “the two will have become so conflated in the minds of the world” that references to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust will come to be seen as “just a political defense of Israeli policy.”

The essay also takes to task “Wrestling With Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” (Grove Press), a 2003 collection of essays edited by Mr. Kushner and Alisa Solomon. Mr. Kushner said that he and Ms. Solomon took great care to include a wide range of voices in their collection, including those of Ms. Rich, the playwright Arthur Miller and various rabbis.

“Most Jews like me find this a very painful subject,” Mr. Kushner said, and are aware of the rise in vicious anti-Semitism around the world but feel “it’s morally incumbent upon us to articulate questions and reservations.”

Over the telephone, the dinner table and the Internet, people who follow Jewish issues have been buzzing over Mr. Rosenfeld’s article. Alan Wolfe, a political scientist and the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, said, “I’m almost in a state of shock” at the verbal assaults directed at liberal Jews.

On H-Antisemitism (h-net.org), an Internet forum for scholarly discussions of the subject, Michael Posluns, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, wrote, “Sad and misbegotten missives of the sort below make me wonder if it is not the purpose of mainstream Jewish organizations to foster anti-Jewishness by calling down all who take from their Jewish experience and Jewish thought a different ethos and different ways of being as feeding anti-Semitism.”

Others have praised Mr. Rosenfeld’s indictment and joined the fray. Shulamit Reinharz, a sociologist who is also the wife of Jehuda Reinharz, the president of Brandeis University, wrote in a column for The Jewish Advocate in Boston: “Most would say that they are simply anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites. But I disagree, because in a world where there is only one Jewish state, to oppose it vehemently is to endanger Jews.”

Although many of the responses to the essay have referred to its subject as “Jewish anti-Semitism,” Mr. Rosenfeld said in a telephone interview that he was very careful not to use that phrase. But whatever it is called, he said, “I wanted to show that in an age when anti-Semitism is resurgent, Jews thinking the way they’re thinking is feeding into a very nasty cause.”

In his essay he says that “one of the most distressing features of the new anti-Semitism” is “the participation of Jews alongside it.” Like others, Mr. Cohen of The Washington Post complained that the essay cherry-picked quotations. “He mischaracterized what I wrote,” he said. “I’ve been critical of Israel at times, but I’ve always been a defender of Israel.” He did add, however, that a wide range of writers were named, some of whom have written inflammatory words about Israel. “He has me in a very strange neighborhood,” Mr. Cohen said.

The dispute goes beyond the familiar family squabbling among Jews that is characterized by the old joke about two Jews having three opinions on a single subject. Bitter debates over anti-Israel statements and anti-Semitism have entangled government officials, academics, opinion-makers and others over the past year, particularly since fervent supporters and tough critics of Israel can be found on the right and the left.

Mr. Wolfe, who has written about a recent rise in what he calls “Jewish illiberalism,” traces the heated language to increasing opposition to the Iraq war and President Bush’s policy in the Middle East, which he said had spurred liberal Jews to become more outspoken about Israel.

“Events in the world have sharpened a sense of what’s at stake,” he said. “Israel is more isolated than ever,” causing American Jewish defenders of Israel to become more aggressive.

On this point Mr. Rosenfeld and Mr. Wolfe are in agreement. “It’s going up a notch or four or five,” Mr. Rosenfeld said in an interview. “One of the things that is clear,” he said of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attacks, “is that what used to be on the margin and not very serious is becoming more and more mainstream.”

Mr. Rosenfeld, who has written and edited more than half a dozen books as well as other publications for the committee, emphasized that policy disagreements were natural and expected. Opposing Israel’s settlement of the West Bank or treatment of Palestinians “is, in itself, not anti-Semitic,” he writes; it is questioning Israel’s right to exist that crosses the line.

But Mr. Judt said, “I don’t know anyone in a respectable range of opinion who thinks Israel shouldn’t exist.” (Mr. Judt advocates a binational state that is not exclusively Jewish, something that many Jews see as equivalent to dissolving Israel). He contends that harsh complaints about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians are the real target.

Last year Mr. Judt came to the defense of two prominent political scientists, Stephen M. Walt at Harvard and John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, after they were besieged for publishing a paper that baldly stated (among other things) that anyone critical of Israel or the American Jewish lobby “stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite.”

David Singer, the committee’s director of research, said the attention Mr. Rosenfeld’s essay had drawn was not unexpected. “We certainly thought that it would raise eyebrows in some quarters,” he said.

“I think it’s an act of courage” on the part of the American Jewish Committee and the author, he added. “It obviously deals with matters of great sensitivity.”

“Well, this is quite a turnout for an ‘ism,’ ” said the art historian and critic Lucy Lippard on Friday morning as she looked out at the people filling the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater at the Museum of Modern Art and spilling into the aisles. “Especially in a museum not notorious for its historical support of women.”

Ms. Lippard, now in her 70s, was a keynote speaker for a two-day symposium organized by the museum that was titled “The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts.” The event itself was an unofficial curtain-raiser for what is shaping up as a watershed year for the exhibition — and institutionalization, skeptics say — of feminist art.

For the first time in its history this art will be given full-dress museum survey treatment, and not in just one major show but in two. On March 4 “Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution” opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, followed on March 23 by “Global Feminisms” at the Brooklyn Museum. (On the same day the Brooklyn Museum will officially open its new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and a permanent gallery for “The Dinner Party,” Judy Chicago’s seminal proto-feminist work.)

Such long-withheld recognition has been awaited with a mixture of resignation and impatient resentment. Everyone knows that our big museums are our most conservative cultural institutions. And feminism, routinely mocked by the public media for 35 years as indissolubly linked with radicalism and bad art, has been a hard sell.

But curators and critics have increasingly come to see that feminism has generated the most influential art impulses of the late 20th and early 21st century. There is almost no new work that has not in some way been shaped by it. When you look at Matthew Barney, you’re basically seeing pilfered elements of feminist art, unacknowledged as such.

The MoMA symposium was sold out weeks in advance. Ms. Lippard and the art historian Linda Nochlin appeared, like tutelary deities, at the beginning and end respectively; in between came panels with about 20 speakers. The audience was made up almost entirely of women, among them many veterans of the women’s art movement of the 1970s and a healthy sprinkling of younger students, artists and scholars. It was clear that people were hungry to hear about and think about feminist art, whatever that once was, is now or might be.

What it once was was relatively easy to grasp. Ms. Lippard spun out an impressionistic account of its complex history, as projected images of art by women streamed across the screen behind her, telling an amazing story of their own. She concluded by saying that the big contribution of feminist art “was to not make a contribution to Modernism.” It rejected Modernism’s exclusionary values and authoritarian certainties for an art of openness, ambiguity, reciprocity and what another speaker, Griselda Pollock, called “ethical hospitality,” features now identified with Postmodernism.

But feminism was never as embracing and accessible as it wanted to be. Early on, some feminists had a problem with the “lavender menace” of lesbianism. The racial divide within feminism has never been resolved and still isn’t, even as feminism casts itself more and more on a globalist model.

The MoMA audience was almost entirely white. Only one panelist, the young Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu, was black. And the renowned critic Geeta Kapur from Delhi had to represent, by default, all of Asia. “I feel like I’m gate-crashing a reunion,” Ms. Mutu joked as she began to speak, and she wasn’t wrong.

At the same time one of feminism’s great strengths has been a capacity for self-criticism and self-correction. Yet atmospherically the symposium was a very MoMA event, polished, well executed, well mannered, even cozy. A good half of the talks came across as more soothing than agitating, suitable for any occasion rather than tailored to one onto which, I sensed, intense personal, political and historical hopes had been pinned.

Still, there was some agitation, and it came with the first panel, “Activism/Race/Geopolitics,” in a performance by the New York artist Coco Fusco. Ms. Fusco strode to the podium in combat fatigues and, like a major instructing her troops, began lecturing on the creative ways in which women could use sex as a torture tactic on terrorist suspects, specifically on Islamic prisoners.

The performance was scarifyingly funny as a send-up of feminism’s much-maligned sexual “essentialism.” But its obvious references to Abu Ghraib, where women were victimizers, was telling.

In the context of a mild-mannered symposium and proposed visions of a “feminist future” that saw collegial tolerance and generosity as solutions to a harsh world, Ms. Fusco made the point that, at least in the present, women are every bit as responsible for that harshness — for what goes on in Iraq for example — as anyone.

Ms. Kapur’s talk was also topical, but within the framework of India. It is often said that the activist art found in early Western feminism and now adopted by artists in India, Africa and elsewhere has lost its pertinence in its place of origin. Yet in presenting work by two Indian artists, Rummana Hussain (1952-1999) and Navjot Altaf (born in 1949), Ms. Kapur made it clear that they have at least as much to teach to the so-called West as the other way around.

Ms. Hussain, a religious secularist, used images from her Muslim background as a critical response to sectarian violence; Ms. Altaf (known as Navjot), though based in Mumbai, produces art collaboratively with tribal women who live difficult lives in rural India.

Collaborative or collective work of the kind Navjot does has grown in popularity in the United States and Europe in the past few years. And several of the symposium’s panelists — Ms. Lippard, the Guerrilla Girls, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Catherine de Zegher — referred to it as a potential way for feminist art to avoid being devoured and devitalized by an omnivorous art market.

It was Ms. Fusco again who brought utopian dreams to earth. While sympathetic to the idea of collective work as an alternative to the salable lone-genius model, she suggested that the merchandising of art is at present so encompassing, and the art industry so fundamentally corrupted by it, that even collectives tend to end up adhering to a corporate model.

The power of the market, which pushes a few careers and throws the rest out — the very story of feminist art’s neglect — was the invisible subtext to the entire symposium. It was barely addressed, however, nor was the reality that the canonization of feminist art by museums would probably suppress everything that had made the art radical. Certainly no solutions for either problem was advanced, except one, incidentally, by Connie Butler, MoMa’s drawings curator, who is also the curator of the Los Angeles show.

In her panel talk she said that when she was agonizing over what choices of work to make for the “Wack!” exhibition, the art historian Moira Roth suggested, brilliantly, that she just eliminate objects altogether. Instead, Ms. Roth said, why not invite all the artists who made them to come the museum for a group-consciousness-raising session, film the session, and then make the film the show?

Somewhat unexpectedly, signs of a raised consciousness were evident among young people in the MoMA audience, the kind of people we are told either have no knowledge of feminism or outright reject it. In the question-and-answer sessions after each panel, the most passionate, probing and agitating questions and statements came from young women who identified themselves as students or artists.

When they spoke; when Richard Meyer, a gay art historian, spoke about queer feminism; and when Ms. Mutu ended her presentation by simply reading aloud a long list of curators, scholars and artists — all of them women, all of them black — who, could and should have been at the MoMA symposium, I had a sense that a feminist future was, if not secure, at least under vigilant consideration.

In trying to create a brighter future for quarterback Eli Manning, Giants Coach Tom Coughlin continues to reach into his own past.

In 1997, Coughlin, then the coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, hired Chris Palmer as his offensive coordinator. Palmer replaced Kevin Gilbride, who had taken the head-coaching position with the San Diego Chargers.

Coughlin has made a similar move now, hiring Palmer as the Giants’ quarterbacks coach to replace Gilbride, who was elevated to offensive coordinator. An announcement is expected today.

Palmer, 57, spent last season as the quarterbacks coach for the Dallas Cowboys, who changed to the inexperienced quarterback Tony Romo from the veteran Drew Bledsoe at midseason, with good results.

Palmer was the offensive coordinator of the Jaguars in 1997 and 1998. In 1997, Mark Brunell led the American Football Conference in passer rating and was named to the Pro Bowl.

In 1999, Palmer became the coach of the expansion Cleveland Browns. He was fired after two seasons; quarterback Tim Couch, chosen with the first overall pick in the 1999 draft, struggled to live up to expectations.

From 2002 to 2005, Palmer was the offensive coordinator of the Houston Texans, helping develop another No. 1 overall pick, quarterback David Carr.

The tie between Palmer and Gilbride runs deep. Each played quarterback at Southern Connecticut State — Palmer graduated in 1972, two years before Gilbride. Both are in the university’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Palmer’s first coaching experience in the N.F.L. was as the receivers coach for the Houston Oilers from 1990 to 1992. Gilbride was the team’s offensive coordinator.

The Giants were 8-8 in 2006 and lost six of their final eight regular-season games. They made the National Football Conference playoffs as a wild-card team, but lost to the Philadelphia Eagles in the first round.

Before the final regular-season game, Coughlin stripped the offensive coordinator John Hufnagel of his responsibilities and handed them to Gilbride.

Manning, the first choice in the 2004 draft, was inconsistent most of the season and showed few signs of progress from the previous season.

“I’ve only had one quarterbacks coach in the N.F.L.,” Manning said during a conference call Thursday when asked about his ideal coach. “I’m just looking for someone who’s obviously smart, intelligent. Someone who we can have a good relationship and just really communicate well together and be on the same page with things. Someone who has good drills and is going to be hard on me and coach me and make sure that everything that I’m doing, I’m doing to get better.”

Filed at 2:56 p.m. ET

AP National Writer Paul Newberry is covering the sights and sounds surrounding Super Bowl XLI in Miami and filing daily reports:

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Wednesday, Jan. 31.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Decisions, decisions.

The Indianapolis Colts have just finished their media availability — you know, the daily round-table where guys answer the same ol’ questions for about the 50th time this week — and I’m faced with a quandary.

Should I head back to Miami Beach for another round of scintillating news conferences … or, should I hang out at the Colts’ hotel for the rest of the afternoon?

Let me tell you, Indianapolis has favored status at this Super Bowl in more ways than one. While the Chicago Bears are assigned to a hotel near Miami International Airport, with glorious views of planes landing and taking off, the Colts are trying to get by at a beachside resort in Fort Lauderdale.

At this very moment, I’m looking out on the sparkling blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s got to be at least 70 degrees. There’s not a cloud in the sky. A gentle breeze is rolling onshore.

I could go parasailing. Or rent a jet ski. Or just hang out on one of those comfy looking beach chairs, getting some much-needed sun for my pale winter skin.

I’m sure there’s a way to justify this as real work. What if Peyton Manning got a sunburn? I could spring into action for the exclusive interview (assuming I haven’t dozed off myself). What if Adam Vinatieri gets a sand spur in that valuable right foot? That scoop would belong to me.

So, should I stay or should I go?

I guess it’s time to go.

Who says this isn’t a tough job?

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TUESDAY, Jan. 30:

MIAMI — It’s Super Bowl Media Day — time to play my own version of ”Mission: Impossible.”

Peyton Manning is the target. The goal? Ask a question of the Indianapolis Colts’ star quarterback.

This will require some advanced planning, so I grab a chart handed out by the NFL. Drawing on the expertise gained during my aborted career as a CIA spy (disclaimer: not everything you read in this blog is true), I deduce that Manning will hanging out for a full hour on podium No. 4, which is set up near the 25-yard line of Dolphin Stadium.

Granted, I’m not actually writing a story on Manning. I don’t really need to ask him anything. But if the Super Bowl is for the players (along with the TV networks and corporate sponsors), then Super Bowl Media Day is for the journalists.

This is our chance to shine. This is a chance to show that we really belong. This is our chance to show that we can ask the hard questions, along with the questions that are hard to ask.

What’s that you say? Getting off one question in one hour doesn’t sound all that tough? Well, it’s obvious that you’ve never been to this human traffic jam on steroids, having an elbow jammed in your ribs or a camera banged off the side of your head.

As a veteran of past Super Bowls, I know this one solitary question is hardly a shoe-in. Manning is the most prominent player in the title game. I’ll have lots of competition, hundreds of would-be interrogators ranging from serious journalists — hey, there’s Pulitzer Prize-winner Dave Anderson of The New York Times — to the folks just milking their moment in the spotlight. Yep, those two guys who were dissed by Simon on ”American Idol” somehow got through the gate, one wearing Manning’s No. 18 jersey, the other decked out in the No. 54 of Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher.

For my purposes, they’re all the enemy, the sort of people who will be vying for Manning’s precious attention. I’ll need to bring my A-game. I’ll need to give 110 percent. I know there’s no tomorrow (well, actually, both teams will be available Wednesday and Thursday at their team hotels, but that doesn’t count).

Always one to arrive fashionably late, I saunter toward Manning’s spot about 10 minutes into this 60-minute affair, hoping that some of the weaklings will already have given up. No such luck — he’s engulfed by a horde of reporters, cameras and recorders.

One of the more resourceful devices is a long metal pole with a camera taped to the top. Too bad I can’t mount myself on top of a pole.

Right away, I’m able to maneuver directly in front of the quarterback, a seemingly prime spot though I’m stuck behind a five-deep pileup. No need to start shouting yet. I’ll bide my time, let the others tire themselves out, then move in for the kill.

Five minutes after I arrive, I’m able to slide into the four-deep position. Should I start yelling? Not yet.

Soon, I’m distracted by a cameraman, clicking away at 7 o’clock (right behind my left ear). I turn and give him the look of death. He apologizes and backs away.

Then, a correspondent from ”Entertainment Tonight” steals the spotlight, just sauntering right up to announce that he’s come to present Manning with some sort of mock award. The quarterback is clearly distracted by the shiny glass trophy, because he turns toward the ET camera right away.

Dang, I should have brought a present to give Manning.

The minutes are ticking away — literally, in large numbers on the stadium scoreboard. Thirty-five minutes to go. Thirty minutes to go. I’m going to have to make my move.

”Pey …!” That’s all I get off before someone else out-hollers me.

”Peyton …!” A little better, but he still doesn’t look.

Another problem has arisen. I had several potential questions to fire at Manning, but most of them have already been asked. I need some fresh material. Fortunately, my co-worker from Chicago walks up from behind, asking if Manning has said anything about Urlacher.

What a break! I volunteer to ask the question.

And what’s this? A spot right up front has opened, but Sal Paolantonio from ESPN cuts me off at the pass. And, in a brilliant maneuver, he also interrupts my next attempt — after I’ve already gotten out, ”Hey Peyton, how do you account …”

Damn those TV guys, with their perfect hair and pressed suits!

But I don’t miss my next chance, getting off the inquiry in its entirety. It’s taken a full half hour, but I’ve made it with 22 minutes to go. Manning looks duly impressed at my interrogating techniques, responding with a long, thoughtful answer.

When he’s finished, I mouth the words ”thank you” and walk away. I should have brought a ”Mission Accomplished” banner to unfurl on top of the stadium.

Looking back, I spot an attractive woman positioned on top of a riser, shrieking toward the podium: ”Peyton! Peyton! Peyton!” He doesn’t even look up.

Rookie.

——

MONDAY, Jan. 29:

MIAMI (AP) — We turned right, sped up the ramp … and saw nothing but red lights staring back at us as we merged onto Interstate 95. Welcome to South Florida and all its glorious sprawl.

Riding with a colleague to the Indianapolis Colts’ hotel in nearby Fort Lauderdale, I got my first sustained glimpse of this area’s notorious traffic. Even though the expected 30-minute drive wound up taking more than an hour, it wasn’t that big a deal for someone who’s based in Atlanta, where gridlock is an accepted way of life.

Besides, we made it to the hotel with a few minutes to spare, wading through fans and groupies camped out in the lobby for the Colts’ arrival Monday evening.

Security officers were everywhere — guarding elevators, searching bags and checking credentials at the entrance to the massive tent where interviews were held with coach Tony Dungy and a small assortment of players (Sorry, no Peyton Manning. He won’t be available until Tuesday’s media confab at Dolphin Stadium).

One woman tried to pull a fast one just before the interviews started, arriving at the door without a credential and proclaiming that she was with a journalist who had just walked in.

The guard wasn’t buying her story. He shouted out to the reporter, asking if they were together. ”I’ve never seen her before” was the reply.

Nice try.

Taking the podium first, Dungy was asked if his players might be tempted by the myriad of opportunities for getting into trouble during Super Bowl week. Good question. Remember what happened the last time the NFL played its championship game in Miami?

In 1999, Atlanta safety Eugene Robinson was arrested the night before the big game, charged with soliciting sex from an undercover police officer. Not surprisingly, the Falcons were whipped 34-19 by the Denver Broncos.

”We did talk about what happened to some other guys at the Super Bowl,” Dungy said, without naming names.

Meanwhile, plenty of journalists have been complaining about their digs at the main media hotel, sharing their supposed horror stories when they weren’t listening to cliches. The rooms are shabby. It’s inconvenient. Heck, they don’t even have HBO.

Of course, this is par for the course when it comes to sportswriters, who must have to take a course in Whining 101 on their way through college. They have one of the best jobs in the world — if you can call it a job — but all they do is talk about their hardships.

They won’t get much sympathy from those folks who don’t get an all-expenses-paid trip to the country’s biggest sporting event.

——

MIAMI (AP) — Let the press conferences begin!

A steady stream of talking heads paraded through the Super Bowl media center, discussing everything from the coolest weather of the season (it’s dipping into the low 50s) to the state of security (which is ”Level 1,” in case you were wondering).

This being Miami, it didn’t take long for someone to bring up that ailing leader to the south. Cuban expatriates are making plans for an official celebration whenever Fidel Castro dies, but what happens if he passes away DURING the Super Bowl?

Not to worry. Robert Parker, who runs the Miami-Dade Police Department, said the city has come up with a plan for just such an occurrence and even rehearsed it. ”We did a tabletop exercise just this morning,” he said.

Whew, that’s a relief.

Next to Castro, the most pressing security issue involved that most American of pastimes. Call this one Tailgating — er — Gate, because the NFL won’t be letting anyone grill brats in the parking lot before the game. Yep, you heard me right. At the biggest football game of the season, tailgating is actually BANNED.

The NFL’s security honcho, Milt Alherich, pointed to a lack of parking space and a need to maintain tight control over the area around Dolphin Stadium. And listen to this spin on things: ”It’s for the fans,” he said. ”It’s for the convenience of the fans and the safety of the fans.”

Hmmm. Somehow, I don’t think the fans will see it that way.

One other thing stood out during the news conference on security. Julie Torres, an ATF agent who’s leading the federal effort on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, was asked just what it means to be a ”Level 1” event.

Well, she explained, the Iraqi elections were ”Level 2,” which means the feds didn’t assign as many agents to watch over things as they’ll have at the Super Bowl. Doesn’t that sound like a strange sense of priorities?

^——

SUNDAY, Jan. 28:

MIAMI (AP) — The Super Bowl countdown has started — yep, only one week to go — but the hype is still at the lukewarm stage.

Other than a few signs hanging at Miami International Airport (”One Game, One Dream,” they proclaimed with typical NFL melodrama), it seemed like just another day in this winter mecca. Snowbirds arriving for some much-needed Sun & Surf. A British couple on vacation, not at all interested in this American brand of football. And, of course, the airline delivering a broken piece of luggage on the carousel, along with this infuriating disclaimer.

”We’re not responsible for any damage to the wheels and handles,” an agent said. Oh well, I guess I’ll be dragging this one the rest of the way.

The media enclave is set up in the Miami Beach Convention Center, which is right next to the Jackie Gleason Theatre (an ode to another glorious era of partying and debauchery in this town). Out front, a cadre of orange-jacketed security officers stood ready to search every computer bag that came through the doors. Mostly, they just stood around. The cavernous hall was largely empty, the literal calm before the storm in what has become a de facto American holiday. The only signs of life were provided by the NFL Network, blaring from every television as they breathlessly marked the arrival of the Chicago Bears.

And what about the Indianapolis Colts? Join us again Monday night — that’s when they’ll be touching down.

It wasn’t until I turned the corner onto Ocean Drive in search of my hotel that I got my first taste of what’s to come. The South Beach traffic was bumper to bumper (OK, so it’s probably that way most nights in this land of roped-off clubs and scanty attire, but work with me here). And what’s that creeping along in the opposite lane? Yep, it’s a white stretch Hummer.

Ahhh, now it feels like a Super Bowl.

BAGHDAD, Jan. 28 — Staff Sgt. Hector Leija scanned the kitchen, searching for illegal weapons. One wall away, in an apartment next door, a scared Shiite family huddled around a space heater, cradling an infant.

It was after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, on Haifa Street in central Baghdad, and the crack-crack of machine-gun fire had been rattling since dawn. More than a thousand American and Iraqi troops had come to this warren of high rises and hovels to disrupt the growing nest of Sunni and Shiite fighters battling for control of the area.

The joint military effort has been billed as the first step toward an Iraqi takeover of security. But this morning, in the two dark, third-floor apartments on Haifa Street, that promise seemed distant. What was close, and painfully real, was the cost of an escalating street fight that had trapped American soldiers and Iraqi bystanders between warring sects.

And as with so many days here, a bullet changed everything.

It started at 9:15 a.m.

“Help!” came the shout. “Man down.”

“Sergeant Leija got hit in the head,” yelled Specialist Evan Woollis, 25, his voice carrying into the apartment with the Iraqi family. The soldiers from the sergeant’s platoon, part of the Third Stryker Brigade Combat Team, rushed from one apartment to the other.

In the narrow kitchen, a single bullet hole could be seen in a tinted glass window facing north.

The platoon’s leader, Sgt. First Class Marc Biletski, ordered his men to get down, away from every window, and to pull Sergeant Leija out of the kitchen and into the living room.

“O.K., everybody, let’s relax,” Sergeant Biletski said. But he was shaking from his shoulder to his hand.

Relaxing was just not possible. Fifteen feet of floor and a three-inch-high metal doorjamb stood between where Sergeant Leija fell and the living room, out of the line of fire. Gunshots popped in bursts, their source obscured by echoes off the concrete buildings.

“Don’t freak out on me, Doc,” Sergeant Biletski shouted to the platoon medic, Pfc. Aaron Barnum, who was frantically yanking at Sergeant Leija’s flak jacket to take the weight off his chest. “Don’t freak out.”

Two minutes later, three soldiers rushed to help, dragging the sergeant from the kitchen. A medevac team then rushed in and carried him to a Stryker armored vehicle outside, around 9:20. He moaned as they carried him down the stairs on a stretcher.

The men of the platoon remained in the living room, frozen in shock. They had a problem. Sergeant Leija’s helmet, flak jacket, gear and weapon, along with that of at least one other soldier, were still in the exposed area of the kitchen. They needed to be recovered. But how?

“We don’t know if there’s friendlies in that building,” said Sgt. Richard Coleman, referring to the concrete complex a few feet away from where Sergeant Leija had been shot. Sergeant Biletski, 39, decided to wait. He called for another unit to search and clear the building next door.

The additional unit needed time, and got lost. The men sat still. Sergeant B, as his soldiers called him, was near the wall farthest from the kitchen, out of sight from the room’s wide, shaded window. Sergeant Woollis, Private Barnum, Sergeant Coleman and Specialist Terry Wilson sat around him.

Together, alone, trapped in a dark room with the blood of their comrade on the floor, they tried to piece together what had happened. Maybe the sniper saw Sergeant Leija’s silhouette in the window and fired. Or maybe the shot was accidental, they said, fired from below by Iraqi Army soldiers who had been moving between the buildings.

Sergeant Woollis cited the available evidence — an entrance wound just below the helmet with an exit wound above. He said the shot must have been fired from the ground.

The Iraqis were not supposed to even be there yet. The plan had been for Sergeant Leija’s squad to work alongside an Iraqi Army unit all day. But after arriving late at the first building, the Iraqis jumped ahead, leaving the Americans and pushing north without searching dozens of apartments in the area.

The Iraqi soldiers below the kitchen window had once again skipped forward. An American officer later said the Iraqis were brave to push ahead toward the most intense gunfire.

But Sergeant Leija’s squad had no communication links with their Iraqi counterparts, and because it was an Iraqi operation — as senior officers repeatedly emphasized — the Americans could not order the Iraqis to get back in line. There was nothing they could do.

9:40 a.m.

An Iraqi soldier rushed in and then stopped, seemingly surprised by the Americans sitting around him. He stood in the middle of the darkened living room, inches away from bloody bandages on the carpet.

“Get away from the window!”

The soldiers yelled at their interpreter, a masked Iraqi whom they called Santana. Between their shouts and his urgent Arabic, the Iraqi soldier got the message. He slowly walked away.

A few minutes later it happened again. This time, the Iraqi lingered.

“What part of ‘sniper’ don’t you understand?” Sergeant Biletski yelled. The other soldiers cursed and called the Iraqis idiots. They were still not sure whether an Iraqi soldier was responsible for Sergeant Leija’s wound, but they said the last thing they wanted was another casualty. In a moment of emotion, Private Barnum said, “I won’t treat him if he’s hit.”

When the second Iraqi left, an airless silence returned. The dark left people alone to grieve. “You O.K.? ” Sergeant B asked each soldier. A few nods. A few yeses.

Private Barnum stood up, facing the kitchen, eager to bring back the gear left. One foot back, the other forward, he stood like a sprinter. “I can get that stuff, Sergeant,” he said. “I can get it.”

The building next door had still not been cleared by Americans. The answer was no.

“I can’t lose another man,” Sergeant B said. “If I did, I failed. I already failed once. I’m not going to fail again.”

The room went quiet. Faces turned away. “You didn’t fail, sir,” said one of the men, his voice disguised by the sound of fighting back tears. “You didn’t fail.”

9:55 a.m.

The piercing cry of an infant was easily identifiable, even as the gunfire outside intensified. It came from the apartment next door. The Iraqi Army had been there, too. In an interview before Sergeant Leija was shot, the three young Iraqis there said that their father had been taken by the soldiers.

“Someone from over there” — they pointed back away from Haifa Street, toward the rows of mud-brick slums — “told them we had weapons,” said a young man, who seemed to be about 18.

He was sitting on a couch. To his right, his older sister clutched an infant in a blanket; his younger sister, about 16, sat on the other side.

The young man said the family was Shiite. He said the supposed informants were Sunni Arabs who wanted their apartment.

The truth of his claim was impossible to verify, but it was far from the day’s only confounding tip. Earlier that morning, an Iraqi boy of about 8 ran up to Sergeant Leija. He wanted to tell the Americans about terrorists hiding in the slums behind the apartment buildings on Haifa Street’s eastern side.

Sergeant Leija, an easygoing 27-year-old from Raymondville, Tex., ignored him. He and some of his soldiers said it was impossible to know whether the boy had legitimate information or would lead them to an ambush.

That summed up intelligence in Iraq, they said: there is always the threat of being set up, for an attack or an Iraqi’s own agenda.

The Iraqi Army did not seem worried about such concerns, according to the family. The three young Iraqis said they were glad that the Americans had come. Maybe they could help find their father.

10:50 a.m.

Sergeant. Coleman tried using a mop to get the gear, and failed. It was too far away. With more than an hour elapsed since the attack, and after no signs of another shot through the kitchen window, Sergeant B agreed to let Private Barnum make a mad dash for the equipment.

Private Barnum waited for several minutes in the doorway, peeking around the corner, stalling. Then he dove forward, pushing himself up against the wall near the window to cut down the angle, pausing, then darting back to the camouflaged kit.

Crack — a single gunshot. Private Barnum looked back at the kitchen window, his eyes squeezed with fear. His pace quickened. He cleared the weapons’ chambers and tossed them to the living room. Then he threw the flak jackets and bolt cutters.

He picked up Sergeant Leija’s helmet, cradled it in his arms, then made the final dangerous move back to the living room, his fatigues indelibly stained with his friend’s blood. There were no cheers to greet him. It was a brave act borne of horror, and the men seemed eager to go.

As Private Barnum gingerly wrapped the helmet in a towel, it tipped and blood spilled out.

11:15 a.m.

Sergeant B sat down on a chair outside the two apartments and used the radio to find out if they would be heading back to base or moving forward. He was told to stay put until after an airstrike on a building 500 yards away.

The platoon, looking for cover, returned to the Iraqis’ apartment, where they found the family as they were before — on the couch, in the dark, around the heater.

Specialist Wilson continued the conversation he started before the gunshot two hours earlier. The young Iraqi man said again that the Iraqi Army had taken his father. “Will you come back to help?” he asked.

“We didn’t take him,” Specialist Wilson said. “The I.A. took him. If he didn’t do anything wrong, he should be back.”

The Iraqi family nodded, as if they had heard this before.

Speaking together — none of them gave their names — they said they had lived in the apartment for 16 years. Ten days ago, before the Americans arrived, Sunnis told them they would kill every Shiite in the building if they did not leave immediately. So they fled to a neighborhood in southern Baghdad where some Shiites had started to gather in abandoned homes. But again, a threat came: leave or die. So less than a week ago, the family returned to Haifa Street.

And now the airstrike was coming.

Sergeant B told the family that they should go into a back room for safety. He asked if they wanted to take the heater with them (they did not), and he reminded everyone to keep their mouths open to protect their inner ears against the airstrike’s shockwave.

A boom, then another even louder explosion hit, shaking dust from the walls. One of blasts came from a mortar shell that hit the building, the soldier said. The family stayed, but for the Americans, it was time to go.

12:30 p.m.

Over the next few hours, the platoon combined sprints across open alleyways with bouts of rest in empty makeshift homes. Under what sounded like constant gunfire, the soldiers moved behind the Iraqi soldiers, staying close.

At one point, the Iraqis detained a man who they said had videos of himself shooting American soldiers. The Iraqi soldiers slapped him in the head as they walked him past.

About an hour later, a sniper wounded two Iraqi soldiers who were mingling outside a squat apartment like teenagers at a 7-11. Private Barnum wrapped their wounds with American bandages. He and the rest of the platoon had been inside, taking cover.

“Stay away from the windows,” Sergeant B kept repeating. The point was clear: don’t let it happen again. Don’t fail.

4 p.m.

Downstairs in the lobby of a mostly abandoned high rise on Haifa Street, the sergeant and his men sat on the floor, exhausted. They were waiting for their Stryker to return so they could head back to base. In 14 hours, they had moved through a stretch of eight buildings on Haifa Street. They had been scheduled to clear 18.

Upstairs, Iraqi soldiers searched rooms and made themselves at home in empty apartments. Many were spacious, even luxurious, with elevators opening into wide hallways and grand living rooms splashed with afternoon sun.

Under Saddam Hussein, Haifa Street had been favored by Baath Party officials and wealthy foreigners. The current residents seemed to have fled in an instant; in one apartment, a full container of shaving cream was left in the bathroom. In that apartment’s living room, a band of Iraqi soldiers settled in, relaxing on blue upholstered couches and listening to a soccer game on a radio they found in a closet.

They looked comfortable, like they were waiting to be called to dinner.

Sergeant B and Specialist Woollis, meanwhile, talked about what they would eat when they got back to their homes in California. The consensus was chili dogs and burgers.

Sergeant B also said he missed his 13-year-old son, who was growing up without him, playing football, learning to become a man with an absentee father. After 17 years in the Army, he said, he was thinking that maybe his family had put up with enough.

“I don’t see how you can do this,” he said, “and not be damaged.”

A few hours later, the word came in: Sergeant Leija had died.

I’ve taught English as a second language for eight years, and I’m no slouch. I’ve taught in Korea and in New York City’s Chinatown. I’ve taken on classrooms of 50 high-school boys at a time. I wouldn’t have guessed that one slim Afghan girl would represent my most difficult challenge.

Fareeba had survived the first formative years of her life as a refugee in Pakistan. She eventually immigrated with her family to the States and set foot in her first real school at age 8, five years ago.

On one hand, when she arrived last year at the middle school where I now teach, Fareeba was a fairly typical immigrant student. She spoke English well enough to attend regular classes, including standard academic English, but she still required supplemental instruction in reading and writing, which I provided in and out of a classroom setting.

On the other hand, Fareeba had assimilated American culture with startling speed. She had picked up a sprinkling of hip-hop slang and traded her head scarf for low-rise jeans and a brass-studded belt. She was academically talented, preternaturally savvy, very lovely and fiercely stubborn. She also told fibs, paused languidly before following any direction, interrupted.

“Listen here, listen here,” she would announce in my class, tossing her pencil down like a gauntlet. “Fareeba is speaking.”

She would push; I would push back gently. I hoped that in some small way I could help bring out the potential behind all her bravado. And as the days lengthened into months, her glowering gave way. She would throw a small orange on my desk, or arrive randomly during a study hall to show me henna designs on her hands. She also began bringing nearly every assignment she received in other classes straight to me.

“Fareeba, three sentences and a row of hearts six lines down is not a paragraph,” I would say, smiling in spite of myself.

“Oh, snap. My bad.” She grinned back.

She troubled me. Yet her untapped abilities thrilled me. I dreamed of Fareeba’s future self, imagining her channeling energetic precocity into meaningful work. A teacher, maybe. A doctor?

Then one day Fareeba’s regular English teacher pulled me aside. There was something I should know: Fareeba had begun writing an original poem in class for an assignment, and for a second-language student, it wasn’t bad: an elegy. The stanzas were for her father, who died of a heart attack in Pakistan. But the next day, her teacher said, instead of turning in the poem she started, she submitted Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”

I imagined Fareeba typing “elegy” into an online search engine — for surely that was what happened. I tried to imagine what she might have been feeling: Was she angry? Giggling? Wiping away tears? Was there some kind of misunderstanding? Newcomers to English can bring very different cultural expectations to schoolwork. Did she even know what she had done?

But later I heard Fareeba bragging about her exploits to her peers in a way that made their deliberate nature unmistakable.

“Oh, my God,” she said joyfully. “I’m in so much trouble.”

In the office the punishment was administered: a day of solitary study. It was a stiff penalty, brought on by Fareeba’s apparent remorselessness. Her mother, who was there in full Muslim hijab, wept. Fareeba’s T-shirt read, “Sweet Baby.”

Maybe Fareeba wanted something like this to happen. Maybe she wanted to let the world know that, compared to the poverty and hardship she had seen, copying poetry off the Internet meant nothing. Maybe her own poem was just too painful to let anyone see. There were a hundred reasons, and I supplied some of them to the vice principal when he asked me for my “take on this.” But all I knew was a kind of wounded pride. I couldn’t understand why Fareeba hadn’t come to me with her poem. Had I only imagined the progress we’d made?

On the day of our first E.S.L. class after the incident, Fareeba walked in as if nothing had happened. Afterward she picked up her books and started to leave. I reached out and stopped her. She pinned me with her eyes, black with defiance and pride.

It wasn’t the poem I cared about anymore. I was concerned about other, less tangible things. I wanted to tell her how beautiful she was; how she was like an elegy. But I didn’t.

“Why did you do this, Fareeba?” I asked at last. “Why didn’t you let me help you?”

She stared out the window of my classroom. She closed her eyes. She did not answer.