Looking back at 2005

Dave Barry can be a very funny writer. His review of 2005 left me with a good case of the chuckles. You can find the entire article in this Washington Post Magazine article. A couple of great quotes to tide you over:

From the January entry:

In other government news, President Bush's nominee to be attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, undergoes a grueling Senate hearing in which Democrats probe him repeatedly about his views on torture. At one point, the Democrats threaten that, if Gonzales does not give them the information they want, they will force him to listen, without ear protection, to a question from Sen. Joe Biden. "No!" screams Gonzales. "Anything but that!"

From the March entry:

In economic news, financially troubled Delta Air Lines announces that it will no longer offer pillows on its flights, because passengers keep eating them. But the economy gets a boost when the jobless rate plummets, as hundreds of thousands of unemployed cable TV legal experts are hired to comment on the trial of Michael Jackson. Jackson is charged with 10 counts of being a space-alien freakadelic weirdo. Everybody agrees this will be very difficult to prove in California.

And from July:

Abroad, the news from London is grim as four terrorist bombs wreak deadly havoc on the city's transit systems, prompting Greta Van Susteren to do a series of urgent personal reports from Aruba on how these attacks could affect the investigation into the Natalee Holloway disappearance.

My hometown paper ran Barry's column today (probably not wanting to have it conflict with "their" review of 2005 - worried that readers couldn't tell the satire from their own reporting). After reading the WaPo version, I realized that my paper brutally butchered the column. Too bad no one does that to their own reporting (and editorials). Catch the WaPo version while it's available.