Fantastic beasts and where to find them

Leave the rooster, that's human interest! And thus do some stories (short answer: no, but thanks for asking) always find a home on the front page -- even, at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network, when the existential peril to the country is reaching peak Kenyan.

Fantastical creatures, in all fairness, are sort of a hereditary ailment of American journalism. Today's Freep, at least, has the excuse of bordering the same lakes:

But the party press has a particular fixation on certain moral fables made incarnate in the supernatural. Take it away, The Washington Examiner!

When Ben Carson, in his speech at the Republican National Convention, drew attention to Hillary Clinton's tribute to the radical community organizer Saul Alinsky (1909-72), no eyebrows ascended. But when Carson went on to invoke Alinsky's admiration of Lucifer, and tie Clinton to that community organizer, the guffaws began in earnest.

"So are we willing," Carson asked, "to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?"

Anyone who has actually read Alinsky, I believe, would have to take the question seriously. 

Well, to be fair -- I'm still waiting for reports from some of you -- so would anyone who has actually read Milton (see, e.g., Jagger & Richards, 1968). But it's somehow reassuring to see the old guy keeping such august company.