Zombies make date to attack Lincoln Memorial, dine on POTUS

[This blog entry has been updated with response form National Park Service to upcoming zombie visit and more details of zombies's visit to Washington.]

Poor President Lincoln -- how did his Mall memorial become the epicenter of wacko TV network marketing stunts?

Four days before Comedy Central unleashes its late-night on-air talent at a Mall rally to teach us how to "restore sanity" to our fair city (while simultaneously poking fun at the rally staged at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in August starring the brightest star in the Fox News Channel firmament Glenn Beck) AMC will dispatch a gang of zombies to "invade" the Lincoln Memorial.

If your Tuesday morning commute takes you in the vicinity of the Lincoln Memorial around 7:30 a.m., prepare to be jostled by some reanimated corpses, photographers and camera crews.

The Lincoln Memorial is just one cog in the Great Wheel of AMC's zombie invasion scheduled for Tuesday as part of a world-wide campaign to promote the Halloween-night debut of the basic cable network's new zombie series "The Walking Dead."

The network has also ordered up un-dead gatherings at tourist attractions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, London, Munich, Madrid, Rome, Athens, Johannesburg, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, etc.

The National Park Service says it has no permit filed for zombie activity at the Lincoln Memorial Tuesday morning by AMC, a posse of zombies, or anyone else.

If the zombies are planning a "demonstration," they would need a permit -- if the group of un-dead numbers 26 or more. A group of 25 or fewer zombies would not need a permit for a "demonstration," Terry Adams, public affairs officer of the National Park Service explains to WaPo TeamTV's Mall bureau chief David Montgomery.

If the Zombies visit is a "special event" instead of a "demonstration," they would need a permit, no matter how small the group, Adam adds.

A "demonstration" is First Amendment-protected activity -- political speech, issue advocacy, and so forth. A march to end war, for example, Montgomery says.

A "special event" is everything else -- cultural gatherings, fundraisers, sports. Think the Marine Corps Marathon or a walk to find a cure for the common cold.

A zombie field trip to promote a TV show sorta smells like a special event, in which case the zombies probably should have sought a permit. But the zombies may contend they are engaging in free speech, and who's to quarrel with a zombie?

When folks, or walking corpses, do show up on the Mall or near the Lincoln, doing something that looks as though it could possibly use a permit, U.S. Park Police officers will sometimes "try to intervene, and say, 'You need a permit for this," Adams says.

Some other rules the zombies need to know: No demonstration or special event activity is permitted inside the chamber of the Lincoln Memorial, around the columns, or on the upper white marble steps.

But zombies making the field trip to Washington have so much more in store than just the visit to the Lincoln Memorial. AMC's official zombie-wrangling firm told WaPo TeamTV's Emily Yahr that, after exploring the tribute to our country's 16th president, the zombies will board a bus and head to Georgetown to dine on the President of the United States.

If you encounter them at the memorial, don't spoil their fun and tell them that the motorcade they will be chasing down in Georgetown will contain only a Pretend POTUS -- President Obama was too busy to participate, we're guessing.

After snacking on Pretend POTUS in Georgetown, details of the zombies's day get a little murky. We think they are going to split up, and some will head to Chinatown while others will make a beeline for Farragut North. After that, they may reunite at the end of the day, at the Washington Monument back on the Mall.

Here's a preview of AMC's "The Walking Dead": We do not know if any of these same zombies will be among those in Washington on Tuesday:



