Who said The New York Times has no sense of humor? Its obituary page became a scandal earlier this month, prompting an in-house
warning to the staff, but an obit
correction this morning (sixth paragraph down) still read like a satire
from The Onion:
An obituary on Wednesday about Lewis M. Allen, a theater and film
producer, misidentified a Tony Award won by his production of “Annie.” It was for best musical,
not best play. The obituary also included a credit erroneously. The producer of the play “The
Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” was Robert Whitehead.
The obituary also referred incorrectly to the movie “The Connection,” which Mr. Allen
produced, and misstated its year. It was not a Francis Ford Coppola film and was not nominated
for an Oscar. It was released in 1962, not 1974. (“The Conversation,” by Mr. Coppola, was a
1974 movie that was nominated for Oscars.)
The obituary also misspelled the title of the Alfred Hitchcock movie written by Mr. Allen’s
wife, Jay Presson Allen. It was “Marnie,” not “Marny.”
Also this morning, Times op-ed columnist David Brooks seems to believe he’s writing
for The Onion. “I think we are all disgusted by the way George W. Bush’s administration has
allowed honesty and candor to seep into the genteel world of international affairs,” he writes in
“A Fetish of Candor.” He actually believes the
Maximum Leader and his cronies are “drunk on truth serum.” (If Brooks keeps this up, the Times
is going to have to start testing him for steroids.)
Finally, this morning’s Gray Lady offered a
At the European Union summit meeting on Friday, Italy’s multibillionaire prime minister,
Silvio Berlusconi, told a joke “about being thrown from a helicopter” that “went like this,
according to an aide who heard it”:
Mr. Berlusconi and his wife were flying over a crowd of protesters when he
said to her: “I could throw out one 10,000-euro note and make one person happy. I could throw
two 5,000-euro notes and make two people happy. Or I could throw 10,000 1-euro coins and
make 10,000 people happy.” To which the pilot replied, “We could throw you out and make
everyone happy.”
It sounds like an urban legend that David Brooks might have made up, but it’s
not.
