April passes, but stop the presses! The very next day, on May 1,
Mr. Osama bin Laden was shot in the head at a rather posh hideaway
in glitzy Abbottabad, Pakistan, just a stone’s throw from a
Pakistani military academy. SEAL Team Six did not throw any stones
at the Pakistani academy, but it did helicopter in and out of
Osama’s pad in less than 40 minutes, taking a limp Osama with them
and leaving the place in a heap. Osama acted heroically, trying to
use one of his wives as a shield, but for naught. She too was shot.
President Barack Obama announced the happy news to the nation on
the evening of May 1, though there were some slight embarrassments.
The oaf Mr. Geraldo Rivera employed the ultimate malapropism.
Instead of reporting, “Osama is dead,” he blurted out, “Obama is
dead.” Then Mr. Rick Santelli yawped similarly and Mr. John Harwood
too. Soon much of the Washington press corps was Tweeting “Obama”
when they meant “Osama.” Poor Mr. Obama. Looking back on it all,
would it not have been better had he kept the name Barry Obama or
better yet Barry O’Bama? Yet, on the question of Mr. Osama’s
whereabouts this past decade, I too was wrong. He apparently never
became crêpe suzette for the worms of Tora Bora, and now he is
serving as food for the fishes in the Arabian Sea, deposited there
by SEAL Team Six. Nice going, boys. Let the environmentalists’
protests begin.
Earlier in the month the president kicked off his reelection
campaign expressing the wish to get back with normal Americans. So
he went to Chicago, then San Francisco. Archaeologists have
unearthed a 5,000-year-old caveman whom they believe is the
earliest known gay. “From history and ethnology,” explained Mrs.
Kamila Remisova from tombside, “we know that people from this
period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely
that this positioning was a mistake.” The body in question was
found in the missionary position. Prince William took Kate
Middleton as his lawful wedded wife in Westminster Abbey on April
29, and then trundled over to Buckingham Palace before a mob of
half a million United Kingdom natives. No one was injured. The
young couple dined apolaustically with 6,000 of their closest
friends, but not as well as they could. Too late, traditional
Chinese chefs arrived in London booming their specialty, spring
eggs hardboiled in boys’ urine. A delicacy produced for more than
2,000 years in Donyang (pronounced, dong’ yang), Zhejiang province,
“The urine is gathered from local schools” by fully certified
chefs, attests chef Lu Ming, so there is no funny business. “The
very best comes from boys under 10 years old” who urinate into
buckets, boasts Mr. Ming. Privacy is always sedulously maintained.
Yet it was not all glad tidings and warm urine for the Chinese
culinary arts. On a highway near Beijing, more than 200 activists
fell on a truck carrying 580 dogs to local eateries, and the mob
blockaded it for 15 hours until they negotiated the dogs’
liberation for $17,000. Who will walk the hounds and where will
they get enough doggie excrement bags has not been worked out, but
it was a rare triumph for social activists in China, suggesting
that if anti-cruelty conventions can only be extended to human
beings, possibly every Chinese citizen can sit down to a hot dog in
peace.
There has been an Al Gore sighting! In Nashville, Tennessee, Mr.
Gore showed up with former president Bill Clinton for the funereal
services of Mr. Ned McWherter, once Tennessee’s governor. Mr. Gore
was mum on global warming, but said that Mr. McWherter “always kept
a connection to working people and the rural poor.” Whether or not
Mr. Gore, himself, made “a connection” at any of Nashville’s local
massage parlors or had a masseuse come directly to his room while
he was in the area could not be ascertained, but Mr. Clinton had a
big smile on his face all the time he was in Nashville, even during
the services. Greenhouse gas dropped to its lowest level in 15
years in 2009, according to the Environmental Protection Agency,
but it was not all glum news for Mr. Gore. On April 19, the Mail
Online reported-in derogatory terms-that “crazed cult leader” and
“infamous killer” Mr. Charles Manson has broken his 20-year silence
and come down foursquare for the Gore thesis. Mr. Manson said that
“bad things” were being done to the environment. Taking a page from
Mr. Gore, Mr. Manson said, “Everyone’s God and if we don’t wake up
to that there’s going to be no weather because our polar caps are
melting because we’re doing bad things to the environment.” The
76-year-old humanist spoke from California’s Corcoran State Prison,
which is unaffiliated with Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of
Art, though they share a community of interests, especially in
their futurist artistes.
Uganda erupted in rioting when veteran opposition leader, Mr.
Kizza Besigye (pronounced, gibb rish’) suffered a gunshot wound to
the hand. In Uganda the hand is considered an almost sacred part of
the body, and many Ugandans eat with them. The American economy
grew at a disappointing 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2011,
down from the 3.1 percent of the prior quarter but still higher
than Uganda’s. India has another candidate for the Nobel Peace
Prize. He is Mr. Har Prakash, who has had 305 national flags and
185 maps tattooed on his body, all for the cause of world peace.
Which flag he has reserved for his private parts remains
confidential, but he confirmed in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he was
attending an international tattoo conference, that his ambition is
to “promote friendship between nations.” Mr. Prakash follows in the
path of another Indian idealist written about in these pages in
April 2004. That would be Mr. Harpreet Devi, who, after driving his
taxi backward for two years, decided to drive it from India to
Pakistan for world peace and to illustrate his “reverse
philosophy.” Indians have been performing such stunts since the
days of the lunatic Mr. Mohandas K. Gandhi, the vegetarian and sex
nut who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times. Why he
never got the prize is a mystery. President Obama already has one,
though he has never driven his car backward or inquired of his
secretary if she “had a good bowel movement”-a matutinal greeting
favored by Gandhi and possibly by Bill Clinton.
Mr. Donald Trump’s pursuit of the Republican presidential
nomination strengthened when he forced President Barack Obama to
reveal his birth certificate. Now Mr. Trump wants him to reveal his
records from Columbia University and information recorded during
his law school days at Harvard State University. A New Mexican
politician, former governor Mr. Gary Johnson, became a candidate
for the Republican presidential nomination. Madame Nhu, the
glamorous if enigmatic hostess in the presidential palace of the
Republic of South Vietnam, died peacefully in Rome, and the
inventor of the TelePrompTer, Mr. Hubert J. “Hub” Schlafly Jr.,
passed away. Mr. Obama did not attend the service. Finally Pope
John Paul II was beatified or, as the New York Times columnist Miss
Maureen Dowd says, beautified. One and a half million people showed
up for the ceremony, not including pickpockets. The Crisis
continues anon.
