Broncos Kicker Ruins Jihad's Good Name with Novel
Longtime Denver Broncos kicker Jason Elam is exploring his aesthetic side these days and has penned a new novel in collaboration with his pastor, Steve Yohn. It's called Ulysses and takes place over the course of a day in Ireland. No no, that's the othergreatest book of all time. Jason Elam's is called Monday Night Jihad , and it's a "pro-football-themed spy thriller about fighting terrorists." Coincidentally, that's exactly how Fred Thompson is pitching his foreign policy approach.
The official book description doesn't give away the ending, but I'll bet Jason Elam's career that it involves terrorists trying to blow up a Monday Night Football game:
After a tour of duty in Afghanistan, Riley Covington is living his dream as a professional linebacker when he comes face-to-face with a radical terrorist group on his own home turf. Drawn into the nightmare around him, Riley returns to his former life as a member of a special ops team that crosses oceans in an attempt to stop the escalating attacks. But time is running out, and it soon becomes apparent that the terrorists are on the verge of achieving their goal: to strike at the very heart of America.
Hush, you cynics out there! Do not deny Elam a place among the literati. For he is the most morally equivocating of an placekicker this side of Mike Vanderjagt (from the Rocky Mountain News ):
"What I was hoping to do, and think I pulled off, was contrast Christianity with radical Islam and moderate Islam," Elam said.
And he purposely avoids demonizing anybody.
"If Osama bin Laden himself were to pick up this book and read it, I'd want him to say, 'Yeah, that's why I do what I do. That's how I justify, how I reconcile, that's what I believe.'"
Bin Laden, however, has released a video saying he's more of an Angels & Demons guy, as far as mass-market-thrillers-as-ideologies go.
Elam reflecting on a different chapter in his life [Rocky Mountain News via With Leather ]