PITTSBURGH - British Prime Minister Tony Blair personally telephoned Pittsburgh's lame-duck Mayor Tom Murphy this morning to plead for the return of several megaliths that he claims once comprised a portion of Stonehenge, the neolithic monument in the English County of Wilshire. Blair alleges that Pittsburgh somehow pilfered the large standing stones, which date to 2500 BC, and has hidden them in a fountain in Mellon Green, a small park between USX Tower and One Mellon Center.
Later, in a free-wheeling interview with Peter Leo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Blair explained that before the megaliths were moved to Mellon Green, they were hidden beneath the Jenkins Arcade where Fifth Avenue Place now stands, and subsequently they were moved to Three Rivers Stadium underneath the visiting team's dugout.
Murphy was dumbfounded by Blair's call. "As they say in England, Tony Blair is 'crackers,'" Murphy said. "I checked with everybody I could speak with in the British government, and nobody knows what he's talking about. The man is nuts."
Nevertheless, Pittsburgh City Council made the Stonehenge controversy its top priority and weighed in on the side of keeping the stones. "Who are the British to tell City Council to return the stones," thundered Council President Gene Ricciardi, "when they, themselves, refuse to restore the Elgin Marbles they misappropriated from the Parthenon?"
Councilman Sala Udin said he is fearful of establishing a dangerous precedent. "If we return Stonehenge to England," Udin said, "what's to stop New York City from demanding that we give back the Guggenheim Museum, which, as we all know, Pittsburgh purloined and uses as a parking garage between Smithfield Street and Liberty Avenue?"
Councilman Bill Peduto immediately silenced Udin. "You know better than that," scolded Peduto. Peduto requested that any mention of the Guggenheim parking garage be stricken from the official minutes of City Council. See related story at http://carbolicsmokeblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/pittsburgh-agrees-to-return-guggenheim.html
