UPDATE: Since folks are having a hard time believing this isn't a spoof, here's a screen capture of the article - check it out for yourselves.
Okay, all you journalism students, get a load of this introduction to the article:
The houses were dark on Bill Frist's street. A morning bird chirped; the others were waiting for dawn. But Frist was awake, and his bedroom light was on. "I'm going to take a shower," the Senate majority leader said brightly. Ten minutes later, the blow dryer roared.Wow, the birds chirped waiting for dawn. LOL I'm sorry, I just can't signify the appropriate level of laughter at this article, it just doesn't come across with LOL.
Oh, but there's more.
Frist spoke "brightly" - at least he didn't chirp - and then his blow dryer "roared." What the hell is this, did someone blow up a high-school thesaurus in the Washington Post news room?
Other lovely parts of the article:
"Well, your first patient was a dog," Karyn said. In medical school, Frist cut out a dog's heart and held it in his palm. It continued to beat for a slippery minute.Funny, I'm guessing the now-dying dog lying on the table without a heart didn't find the scene so beautiful.
"Watching it beat, the beauty of it," Frist recalled. "I decided I would spend my life centered around the heart."
Oh God, read this:
"I gravitate towards insurmountable problems," Frist said, his long legs spilling between the front seats. "I try to use creative solutions." One day, he hopes to cure AIDS or cancer. He sucked on the stem of his glasses: "The typical person around here may not understand."His long legs spilling, he hopes to cure AIDS or even cancer someday! And what's that remark about the "typical person around here" may not understand? You mean, we regular folk can't quite understand the concept of wanting to help people in the world, cuz, you know, we're just country bumpkins like the kind of folks you find in Tennessee?
He unbuttoned his business shirt, revealing jungle-pattern surgical scrubs and a pair of hairy, toned biceps.Hairy toned biceps? Superman? Again, where are the editors?
"A little bit like Superman," said the dentist, Chuck Williams.
He pressed his stethoscope to the gorilla's chest and narrowed his eyes. Kuja, a silverback patriarch, was breathing isofluorine. He was the Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who negotiated disputes, back-slapped the ape boys and owned exclusive mating rights with the females.The Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who had exclusive mating rights with the females? Excuse me?
Frist listened to the heart; the gorilla's lub-dub sounded human. "When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes.Frist was wet with the gorilla's testosterone? Would some editor at the Post please explain exactly how that works - I'm not familiar with people being wetted by someone else's testosterone.
At 9:30 a.m., Frist opened the Senate, gripping the corners of the lectern, as he had the operating table. Across the city, rolling in a bed of hay, Kuja opened his eyes and grunted. The gorilla kept touching his tongue to his tooth. Something had changed inside of the beast while he slept. Frist smiled and spoke unremarkably from the lectern, reeking of silverback testosterone.The beast? And again with the reeking of testosterone?
Are they serious? I don't mean to totally berate another writer, I'm sure she's a nice enough woman, but this article is laughable in its word choice and metaphor. And this testosterone thing is just, well, weird. You have got to be kidding that the Washington Post actually printed something like this.
(Major hat tip to Atrios on this one.)
