Last week, Doug Brin lost his position as a volunteer at the Central Park Zoo—where he considered himself “perhaps the best guide there is”—after making a crack about President Bush. While showing off the zoo’s penguin house, Brin mentioned the threat global warming poses to the animals. “Not to worry,” his standard spiel continued, “as our esteemed president, George W. Bush, has assured us, there’s no such thing as global warming.” It’d be an unremarkable cocktail-party line, but volunteer docentry is no cocktail party. “Some pooh-bah was apparently mortally offended,” says Brin, a former Daily News writer, who was then put out on an ice floe. A zoo spokeswoman denies any pooh-bah meddling, saying the main complainer was an angry mother who said she’d tattle to her PTA about the relative edginess of the zoo tour. As a representative of the zoo, Brin had to stick to the facts, says the spokesperson. “Guides do not engage in personal, political agendas.”

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