Absurdity on Parade

The nuttiness of Parade magazine is consistent from cover to cover: Leading off with Walter Scott's Personality Parade, moving to the brain-dead musings of Marilyn Vos Savant, yukking it up with that mega-mutt Howard Huge and wrapping up with Brady's Bits.

Now the magazine takes its absurdity to new lows, offering a quiz on pop culture from none other than Bill O'Reilly of Fox News fame. It's hard to tell whether O'Reilly wrote the ridiculously easy questions himself, but a clue may lie in the weird wording of this one:

President Dwight D. Eisenhower had one recreational passion outside of Mamie. It was: a) eight ball b) golf c) jogging d) gangsta rap.

Do most people think of their spouses as a recreational passion? Is that how Ike thought of his lovely wife? Then again, this sentence was (allegedly) written by the man who found new uses for falafel, so who knows? Perhaps O'Reilly considers marriage to be a pastime similar to cribbage, yoga or World of Warcraft.

The answer, by the way, is golf. I do like the idea of Ike consulting a magic eight ball in the Oval Office, if that is the sort of "eight ball" that O'Reilly is referring to.