The New York Times Thanksgiving Day Parade

Hi Folks.
We’re Fred Flaco and Francine Baleine reporting from the Ethical Culture Society on Central Park West to bring you this year’s annual New York Times Thanksgiving Day Parade. Francine, could you describe to our audience some of the spectacular highlights we are going to see today?

Well, most notable will be the giant balloons, of course. They’ve replaced Mickey and Spiderman with representations of such cultural luminaries as Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell. In addition we’ll see actors on flatbed trucks re-enacting famous events in history. And of course, the ever-present marching bands and baton twirlers, as well as popular New York celebrities. Mayor Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton are scheduled to appear.

And might we as well expect Mrs. Clinton’s illustrious consort, the ex-president?

No, he’s doing humanitarian work in Thailand.

I bet!

Now the parade is starting up. The first group to make its way down Central Park West is the Neoconservative Skate Dancers dancing to the music of Barry Manilow singing “Copacabana.” Michael, have you noticed how the dancers have foregone the use of roller blades, and are preferring the little steel clip-on skates with the skate key that haven’t been seen for fifty years?

I think they decided it was more in keeping with their attire. Clip-on skates you can attach right over your brogues, and they don’t clash with your bow tie.

Nevertheless, these boys are fantastic athletes. Look at how David Brooks lifts Thomas Friedman and twirls him around his head like that!

It’s nice to know that Brooks can do more then write lame little book reports and mundane homilies about going to school all the time.

Now, here’s a historical float of Henry Kissinger meeting Indonesia’s president Suharto, informing him that the Bush administration would not protest the Indonesian army’s invasion of East Timor as long as it was done “Quickly and cleanly.”

Naturally, it was neither, and thousands of protesters and ordinary citizens were massacred.

Kissinger himself freely admits that he has made some blunders, but he has stated, “Power was made to be used.”

We still enjoy having him up to lunch at The Times.

Now marching down the avenue are The Forgotten Jews of America. These are public dignitaries who were too busy or distracted, until one day they woke and discovered they were Jewish.

The experience was so traumatic that they decided to form a support group to get themselves through the crisis.

I mean, I don’t know what I would think if I suddenly discovered I was, pardon me, Jewish. Who can you turn to?

Tell me, Francine, what’s the significance of those white feathers they’re waving around.

That’s the symbol for “You Could Have Knocked Me Over With a Feather!” That’s how shocked they were when they found out they were Jewish.

There’s Madeleine Albright. Although Madeleine’s relatives from Prague repeatedly sent her numerous notes telling her she was Jewish, all the notes mysteriously disappeared.

Somebody should investigate the U.S. Postal Service!

The only thing that bothers me is, how intelligent can she really be if she wasn’t bright enough to figure out she’s Jewish?

Let history decide. Now here’s John Kerry waving his feather. Kerry’s a very religious Catholic, but he’s also got enough Jewish blood to get elected prime minister of Israel.

How soon we forget! Here’s former Times restaurant critic Ruth Reischl, who’s famous for wearing disguises to eat in restaurants, like Inspector Clouseau. She’s wearing one of her disguises now, dressed as a duck.

She better not go to Chinatown with that suit on.

And right behind her, on a float, is a representation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd playing the title roles.

With the brisk temperatures we’re experiencing here as a result of this cold front, I think it’s safe to say that Frank is probably shivering a little bit under his fig leaf.

Maureen is a little more sensible with her stylish layered look that she got off the rack at Bolton’s. Her only concession to the story of Adam and Eve is the boa constrictor she has wrapped around her neck for a scarf.

I don’t think that snake’s going to derive much warmth from Maureen.

Next are the ladies from the Political Correctness Brigade. These ladies, Republicans and Democrats alike, have buried their political differences and arrived at a consensus of priggishness and humorless intolerance that they enforce with baseball bats. Or, even worse, they lecture and berate you.

Frankly, I’ll take my chances with the baseball bat.

Now on this float here, we have the New York Times Believe it or Not All-Time Greatest Hits, with Jayson Blair fabricating front page news as Howell Raines practices fly fishing. Then we have Judith Miller in the balcony scene from Cyrano de Bergerac, dressed in a gold lamé straitjacket designed by Gauthier of Paris, swooning on the balcony as Lewis Libby recites her love poetry from below while Dick Cheney feeds him his lines from the bushes.

And there’s Susan Sachs who was acting as The Times’ Baghdad bureau chief, sending e-mails to the wives of correspondents, telling them that the men were messing around with Iraqi women.

Right on, lady. Why do nothing when you can do real damage.

The next float recreates a modern New York Times wedding, where two young men, Romeo and Homeo, Princeton graduates, are joined in holy matrimony by Merle Shuster, the lesbian female rabbi of Fire Island.

They’ll be honeymooning in Greece, I understand. They say they want to study the latest French techniques in rectal insemination so they can start a family.

Now we have the gigantic Saul Bellow balloon. Bellow was a literary giant, but even he couldn’t have imagined being 50 feet tall and flying around over Central Park West.

And behind him, the balloon representing former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik, whom the Times slavishly promoted while he was in office. Kerik, as you know, turned out to be a bottom-feeder of the worst order. He’s now in jail. Can his former mentor, Rudolph Giuliani, be far behind?

Not bloody likely. Here’s the Duke University lacrosse team, whom the Times excoriated in article after article and editorial after editorial as a group of bestial, racist rapists until their accuser came clean and admitted that her whole accusation of rape was a put-up job, and the prosecutor in the case was forced to resign and submit to judicial discipline by the North Carolina bar association. Another typical screw-up for which the Times and its editorial staff was never held accountable. It’s like the Times is not responsible for any of the obscene abuses it commits!

You don't see the big picture. The Times is ordained by a Higher Authority to suit its own convoluted agenda and is exempt from all the ethical standards they hold everybody else accountable to. It's perfectly within their purview to lie, manage news, withhold information, manipulate reality and whatever else they choose to imagine.

It's good to be the king.

Speaking of royalty, here comes Times editor Jill Abramson, who publicly declared herself to be New York's arbiter of good taste, right before she got her foot run over by that most elegant of cultural symbols, an Italian garbage truck, while she was standing in the gutter waiting for the traffic light to change and yakking on her cell phone.

She has class!

Yeah, her husband sued the garbage truck for "deprivation of consortium".

What's that mean?

Search me.  I guess she couldn't give him a foot job for a couple of months after the collision.

He probably can't stand her anyway. That's Sex In The City for you.

Now comes the float bearing the Times’ publisher, Pinch Sulzberger. It’s a scene from ancient Rome, and Sulzberger is dressed in a toga like a Roman emperor and playing the lyre.

What’s a lyre, Michael?

What's a liar? Funny you should bring that up, because the next float portrays Times editor Bill Keller who, since he has lived his entire career in a world of manipulation and news management, couldn't identify the truth if he ran over it with his Volvo. But back to your question, a lyre is an ancient musical instrument a little like a harmonica with strings. The reason people stopped playing them is that the strings kept getting stuck in their teeth.

And Pinch Sulzberger's all sprayed in gold. What do you thing is the significance of that, Francine?

I’d say he has too much time on his hands. Say, what’s going on at the back of the parade? There seems to be some disturbance.

Right you are! It looks as though the giant cartoon balloons from the Macy’s Parade have got loose and now they’re attacking the cultural balloons from the New York Times parade.

Oh, I can’t look. It’s so awful!

Mickey Mouse is beating up the Saul Bellow balloon and Pluto is biting his leg. All the gas and hot air is escaping from Bellow’s leg and he’s just collapsed and completely blown out. What a way to go!

Now Spiderman flies up to Bernard Kerik and he kicks him in the butt, and he’s opened out a hole in Bernard Kerik's butt and all the gas is escaping. But instead of collapsing in a crumpled heap, Bernard Kerik is flying around over Manhattan, propelled like a rocket by all the hot gas shooting out of his ass!

But what if he crashes and injures someone?

You’re right, and that’s why the fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Intrepid are here, to shoot down Bernard Kerik. They’re tearing him to bits with the machine gun fire!

And with the last gasp of gas escaping from his butt, Bernard Kerik comes to rest, clinging to the outside of the Times Tower. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

And that ends our coverage of the New York Times Thanksgiving Parade. Ta-ta!

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