As we've seen on the BY repeatedly, it's hard to get sarcasm across in writing unless you know the author. I don't know Peter Bard (or his writing) and outside of the line about the Bright Light of Hempstead, I have no clue if he's serious or just playin. Since it wasn't all that amusing, he wasted a lot of space on a bad joke. He would've been better served to use it as a throwaway line. Something along the lines of "Jeff Hathaway won't be walking through that door, mostly because none of us want him to, so here's my rumor starting list of potential candidates."
