THE FUNNY PAGES

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 tidbit from Reuters that's too funny for The Onion. 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.