Sometime’s a Pie’s Just a Pie

It’s Sunday morning and I’ve got one eye on the public affairs programming while I’m getting caught up on the morning news online.

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace just failed miserably to maintain decorum between McCain spokesperson Rick Davis and Obama uber flack David Axelrod.

Come on, guys, let each other finish.

Davis was the aggressor, taking every opportunity to shout over Axelrod. But Axelrod did not employ the proven tactic of simply shouting back “May I finish?” when faced with this kind of interruption.

And Wallace just sheepishly grinned as the two combatants yelled at each other leaving viewers unable to understand either.

Great television, it wasn’t.

Meanwhile, over on CBS Sunday Morning, I caught Steve Hartman’s report on the two Milwaukee-area 50-year-old guys who fulfilled their pledge to each other back in college to do something really wacky when they hit AARP-membership age.

They had a pie fight.

How silly and how sweet (though the pies were made of shaving not whipped cream).

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer Jim Stingl first reported this hilarity last month so let’s give credit where credit is due.

My search on YouTube failed to turn up any other footage of the Milwaukee festivities but it did lead me to some other variations on the theme.

Any discussion of pie fights must, of course, pay tribute to The Three Stooges. Their humor doesn’t do much for me but this routine is a classic.

And I also was intrigued to find a remarkable bit of soft porn packaged as an underwear ad. I’m not sure if it’s witty or puerile. I guess, to paraphrase Wallace’s employer, I report, you decide.

But wait there’s more. Apparently there was a remake of the old Gilligan’s Island show on TBS that employed the device in an ad entitled “Ginger vs. Mary Ann.”

Now I know I’m skating on thin ice here since this kind of objectifying of the human form is highly controversial. Personally, I think it’s funny but I also know that commentary is easy. Being funny is difficult.

Here’s a blogger who apparently was offended not only by the TBS ad, but by the decision by The Daily Kos to run it.

I guess I find myself siding with Kos and not feeling very offended by this kind of stuff. Of course, it’s all in the eye of the beholder or, as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart kind of said, obscenity is hard to define but we know it when we see it.

Which brings me back to that disgraceful performance on FOX and my thoughts turn to that unlikely philosopher, Rodney King, who asked “Can we all get along?”

It’s a long shot, Rodney, but maybe some day. Maybe someday.