Here’s Gail Collins from today’s Op-Ed page – a good example of the type of cracker-jack content that I as a Times Select subscriber pay for on a daily basis:
This has got to be one of the most interesting places in Iowa. The humans talk to the apes with welding masks over their faces to prove they aren’t cheating and sending signals. The apes’ conversations seem very much focused on things to eat, but they clearly have other concerns. Friends. Weather. Swans. Strange that in a state awash in presidential candidates, not one has ever come to visit.
Maybe they’re afraid of the theological implications. If Republicans believe it is politically dangerous to acknowledge that man descended from apes, they’d regard it as suicidal to admit that Iowa houses 10 nonhumans whose ability to remember and match symbols could win them valuable prizes on TV game shows. Kanzi, the staff members say, can also speak a few words of English. “He’ll say: ‘Rightnow,’ ” said Daniel Musgrave, a staff member. “Watermelon, pineapple, Perrier, thank you — he’s very polite.”
Update: Maybe Newt will meet the monkeys…
But Newt Gingrich, who has always marched to the beat of his own drummer, has a different hook to draw attention from the Iowa Republicans attending the Ames Straw Poll Saturday.
Animals.
The former speaker will have in tow a baby American alligator, a hedgehog tenrec, a barred owl, a leopard gecko and a bunny.
Gingrich, through his “American Solutions” PAC, is holding six policy workshops at the straw poll. And the one he’s co-hosting, on “Green Conservatism,” will include the above creatures from the zoo in Des Moines.
