So the Super Bowl is set. It’ll be the Chicago Bears and the Indianapolis Colts, which is significant for a few reasons, but we’ll let the real media cover that.

On the jokes front, I just thought it’d be nice to take a look back at where we were just a year ago, getting geared up for Super Bowl XL between the Seattle Seahawks and the eventual champions, the Pittburgh Steelers.

Hillary Clinton got our attention by posting a video on her Web site. Today, her campaign posted a press release on her site titled “24 Hours Later, the Reviews Are In.” Then they’ve got blurbs from all of these media outlets, just like the quotes used on movie trailers:

Top pundits on Hillary’s announcement: ‘brilliant,’ ‘bold,’ ‘I’m blown away’ … Clinton announcement hailed in blogs as ‘handled perfectly,’ ‘profoundly moving,’ ‘news of a generation’

It’s kind of adorable how excited these candidates are about this new technology. I wouldn’t be surprised if a candidate announced his or her intentions by going on Oprah, bringing a laptop, logging on to YouTube and playing a video of him or herself in the model of the Obama and Clinton videos and asking the camera operators to just zoom in on the laptop.

That would be fun, but do we really have to get the movie critics in on it? Has there ever been a movie they didn’t rave about?

Let’s go ahead and assume that it is going to get worse and predict what they’ll say about the gripping candidacy-announcing Web video of Sam Brownback (obviously by taking what they’ve said about “Apocalypto” and placing it in the context of the Kansas senator):

“…a non-stop thrill ride that occasionally hits a philosophical speed bump here and there.”

“…has a bright future making illegal snuff films. That’s not a compliment.”

“…it seems like something made by a crazy person.”

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his political allies announced on Sunday the end of a two-month boycott on Iraqi politics. Al-Sadr, Iraq’s parliamentary speaker, made the announcement in front of a large banner reading “Mission Accomplished” after other members of the country’s parliament agreed to consider the al-Sadr bloc’s political demands.

The cleric “found the banner on eBay,” according to an aide speaking on condition of anonymity. “It was so cheap we couldn’t pass it up. I mean we would have paid more for it, but whoever owned it really wanted to get rid of it, I guess. What we’ve accomplished here isn’t exactly, totally done, but Mr. al-Sadr was so excited about the banner he just had us put it up anyway.”

The banner was not made available for comment.