DAN GAINOR: The 5 craziest stories of October — from Karine Jean-Pierre to PETA plaques

We have passed the spooky season of silly “No Kings” protests and whines about White House renovations. Halloween is the start of one of our favorite times of year – eating. The three biggest food holidays land within two months – Halloween (Candyland for those of us with sweet teeth), Thanksgiving and Christmas. And the best two are still on their way – sort of like dessert before the main course. So, who better to lead that off than our friends at Peta.

Peta, which wouldn’t exist if people didn’t eat animals or wear animals or have pets or look at animals in zoos, etc., is one of the strangest organizations around. It is so pro-animal and anti-human that it’s always good for a laugh or a gross out. (We dropped one previous item that was, well, funereal. Trust me, you are better off.) This month, it’s sort of similar, except it’s about a memorial … for some of those previously mentioned tasty animals.

According to Peta, “Wesleyan University, students, faculty, and alumni are coming together to build a more compassionate campus.” No, they’re not doing charity work or going to animal shelters adopting cute puppies. That would make sense. They’re pushing for a plaque. They are “calling on the school to install a PETA-supported ‘Wesleyan Animal Recognition Memorial.’” What’s that, you ask? It’s a memorial plaque “outside the dining hall that would commemorate the millions of chickens, cows, fish, pigs, and others who have been killed and served there as food.”

Yum. Imagine getting ready to eat your industrial, cafeteria burger or chicken fingers and pass by a memorial devoted to the dead critters you are about to eat. For what we are about to receive, thank Peta.

The far-left news outlet The Nation sure does take “F— the police” pretty far. The publication’s Sports Editor Dave Zirin wrote a loving piece about infamous cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal under the headline, “Mumia Abu-Jamal Speaks With the Clear Voice of a Free Man.” 

News flash, he isn’t free and isn’t much of a man either. “Mumia,” as his supporters call him, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He managed to escape the death penalty, but go to almost any leftist protest in the last 40 years and a couple idiots will be carrying “Free Mumia” signs.

The timing of Zirin’s latest interview (he wrote about Mumia for Rolling Stone earlier this year) came right after “an event commemorating the recently departed revolutionary Assata Shakur, the former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army who escaped a New Jersey prison to Cuba 46 years ago.” 

In other words, another cop killer. According to the New York Times’ loving farewell to Shakur, she murdered “state trooper, Werner Foerster, [who] was killed and another, James Harper, [who] was wounded.” 

Notice a trend? You should. Shakur died in September, or I’d dwell more on the media’s love fest for her. Watching Zirin lament the poor health of “the country’s best-known political prisoner” was bad enough. For the record, I lament his health, too, just not in the same way.

If you travel the back roads of the United States, you will encounter oddities – large monuments to furniture, trolls, a giant elephant and even Carhenge. (Just what you think it is. Stonehenge is better.) Count wacky museums in that list. But we are losing one, Leila’s Hair Museum in Missouri. Alas, Leila Cohoon died at 92 and now they are, “rehoming the collection of more than 3,000 pieces to museums across the country,” according to the Associated Press.

AP describes the hair art coming from, “from past presidents, Hollywood legend Marilyn Monroe and even Jesus.” (That last one, I kind of doubt.) 

Hair art used to be how people remembered loved ones or captured keepsakes of famous people. The museum also drew the attention of celebrities from comedian Phyllis Diller to Ozzy and Kelly Osbourne. It’s good to see other museums taking on these unusual memories, but that’s one less cool roadside stop.

Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre made the news in October and not in a good way. She should be used to that after an inauspicious term in her role covering for President Joe Biden’s obvious dementia. “KJP,” as she is sometimes called, has a new book out, “Moving Forward: A Story of Hope, Hard Work, and the Promise of America.” In World Series terms, she whiffed on all three. Don’t wait to buy your copy.

Even the Washington Post had unkind words for it. Book critic Becca Rothfeld wrote a lede 190 words long with six semicolons and two em dashes. She complained that KJP had only given up on the Democratic Party because it helped “usher a doddering Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race.” 

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The piece called KJP a “devoted apparatchik” and “revealingly blinkered.” She’s “an artifact of an age that looks recent on paper but feels prehistoric in practice — the age of pantsuits, the word ‘empowerment,’ the musical ‘Hamilton,’ the cheap therapeutic entreaties to ‘work on yourself’ and ‘lean in’ to various corporate abysses.”

Rothfeld guts the author and the book, noting, “It is incredible — and emblematic of the Democrats’ total aesthetic and intellectual driftlessness — that someone who writes in such feel-good, thought-repelling clichés was hired to communicate with the nation from its highest podium.” I wouldn’t recommend KJP send her resume to the Post just yet.

It takes MSNBC to complain about misogyny in a governor’s race … between two women. Yep, the bright lights of “Morning Joe,” the same show that told you demented Biden was “intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever,” now whine that voting against Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger was sexist. One small problem with that, the Republican candidate is Winsome Earle-Sears, who also happens to be a woman.

Co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Jonathan Lemire had an epic exchange on why female Democrats are struggling. “They’ve nominated women two of the last three elections for the presidency — lost both. There are some who say, ‘Well, we can’t do that again. The stakes are too high.’ But, of course, that does fall into the same misogynistic trap,” said Lemire. To which Brzezinski replied, “Other countries have no problem electing women.” 

Earle-Sears had the last laugh until Election Day, tweeting, “Who wants to tell them?”

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By mfnnews