The front of Thursday's Washington Post shows Nancy Pelosi and Christine O'Donnell as witches with green faces, with the headline “A very scary midterm exam.” (To which we ask: Scary midterm for whom??) The Post wrote "Maybe it's no coincidence that Halloween and Election Day are only days apart. Maybe that explains all the campaign props -- axes! smoking guns! pointy witch hats!" The whimsical quiz which followed was not so fair and balanced as the dueling-witches picture. In the first question, Christine O'Donnell was cast as evil, and in the second, the Post mocked the Republican opponent of Pelosi, not the Speaker:
1. If you call Christine O'Donnell's campaign headquarters in Wilmington and are put on hold, what song will you hear?
– "Witchy Woman" by the Eagles
– "The End of the World" by Skeeter Davis
– "I Want to Be Evil" by Eartha Kitt
(The Post may have put some thought into selecting the Eartha Kitt song, on YouTube here. Kitt launches into the song by speaking the words “I'm tired of being pure! And I'm not chaste!”)
2. Nancy Pelosi's GOP opponent John Dennis cast her as a cackling Wicked Witch of the West in one of his TV ads. The Dennis campaign removed the ad from the Internet after 650,000 views because:
– Wiccan Republicans in San Francisco staged a rally opposing the perpetuation of witch stereotypes.
– The music group representing the estate of composer Harold Arlen objected to the ad's use of "If I Only Had a Brain."
– Children were terrified of the ad's depiction of IRS agents as flying monkeys.
– Late-night hosts ridiculed Dennis for throwing a bucket of water labeled "FREEDOM" on the Pelosi stand-in.
