Quote Of The Day - Maureen Dowd

"I have long been opposed to gays marching in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Fifth Avenue. It isn’t because my father was a past national president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which ran the parade for a century and started the rule that no gays need apply. Faith and begorrah, heaven knows I have nothing against gays. I have something against Irish parades. It has just always seemed strange to me that gays were fighting so hard for so long to bust into such a hoary, boozy, corny tradition. Didn’t they have something more fun and cool to do? But certainly, if gays want in, they should get in. And that’s why Mayor Bill de Blasio is right to blow off the parade in protest of the Putinesque restrictions." - Maureen Dowd, in a New York Times column that slams Bill Donohue and includes a quote from Panti Bliss. "If they’re not kind of gay, they’re not really a parade. A heterosexual parade seems to me an organized walk in the traffic lane."

NOTE: For non-New Yorkers wondering what's with all the fuss, NYC's St. Patrick's Day Parade is a really big deal. Organizers bill the event, which launched in 1762, as the "largest and oldest civilian parade in the world." An estimated two million people attend the parade, which features 150,000 participants. Sao Paolo's gay pride parade, it should be noted, regularly claims attendance of three to four million and over 200,000 participants, but anti-gay groups claim that figure is wildly exaggerated. And Macy's claims that attendance at their Thanksgiving Day Parade is about three million.