Silenced Mime

The Fortnight That Wasn't

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY president Lee Bollinger upset many when he caustically introduced guest speaker and white supremacist August Kreis III at a school forum. Audience members said Bollinger's comments - calling Kreis "petty and cruel" and "astonishingly uneducated" - were impolite. "After all, he is a head of state - in this case, the Aryan Nations," said one student, "and he should be accorded the same degree of respect we'd give, for example, to the president of Iran."

Meanwhile, members of the religious right began planning a fact-finding trip to Iran after learning from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the country has no gays. "For the most part, we rely upon the power of Jesus to convert our gays here in the United States," said a spokesperson for Love in Action, which runs homosexuality reeducation programs. "In Iran, we're told, they rely on beheading. Imagine how powerful it would be to combine the two!"

In a related story, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in an interview with The Advocate that she is not a lesbian, but refused to say whether she had ever visited Iran.

In other campaign news, Clinton announced that she had raised $22 million for the primary races in the third quarter, $3 million more than Senator Barack Obama. Obama said that the shortfall proved that, unlike him, Clinton was beholden to the rich and powerful. Obama added, however, that he was ahead of Clinton in fund-raising for the entire year - $75 million to her $62 million - which proved he was far more popular with ordinary folks than the former first lady.

White House officials said that while they sympathize with the pro-democracy protesters who have been getting arrested and killed in Burma, there is little they can do. "Invasion is out of the question," said a spokesperson. "International law prohibits us from interfering with another nation's sovereignty unless, of course, that nation has threatened to assassinate the father of the president." Foreign policy specialists confirmed that Burma's military dictators had, in fact, confined their death threats to the country's indigenous population.

In business, the US dollar fell to new lows and for the first time ever was worth less than the loonie, Canada's term for its dollar. Canadians said they were thrilled with the news but embarrassed that the entire world now knew they had such a dumb name for their currency.

The Gap confirmed that a vendor had lost a laptop containing confidential information for about 800,000 job applicants. In what may be a related development, the unemployment rate dropped sharply when about 800,000 of the once-unemployed told the Department of Labor they no longer needed work after having been contacted by widows of former Nigerian heads of state who needed assistance in moving large sums of money.

New home sales fell nationwide to a record low. White House officials said the drop proved that it had solved the problem of homelessness. "Thanks to this administration's policies, no one who needs a home is without one," explained a spokesperson. "That's why people are no longer buying new homes."

In local news, the president of MIT warned that, while the university encouraged the tradition of so-called "hacks," students had to be careful not to commit any crimes while carrying out the elaborate practical jokes. "Our students are just as subject to the laws of the land as everyone else," said an MIT representative. "And that really won't change until after their first successful IPO."

A new poll showed that, although a majority of Bay State residents supported casino gambling, none wanted the casinos located near where they live. The governor's office said that shouldn't be a problem and submitted legislation to annex New Hampshire.

Red Sox Nation looked longingly toward Brooklyn as the Sox readily clinched the American League's East Division title while the Mets collapsed during September and failed to make the playoffs. "It brings back fond memories," said one wistful fan. "I envy those Met fans: anxiety, despair, and depression. That's what we once wallowed in and now it's ours no more."

And finally, in sad news, famed mime Marcel Marceau died at age 84. He had no last words.

Published on October 7, 2007. "The Fortnight That Wasn't" appears every other week on the op-ed page of The Boston Sunday Globe.