TW3

That Was The Week That Was … a portrait of our confusion, me’thinks. Looks like we’re attempting some balance, here — not well, of course. But the dense media coverage of McCain’s shopping charade, the Supreme’s throwing the e-brake on Bush’s greenhouse gas stonewall tilts the conversation away from illusions and back toward reality. Disney, of course, is schizophrenic on these issues … they veer Hard Right from time to time with Puritan fervor and then do something positively civil [rights.] It’s a see-saw week … we’ll have more of them.

Jude

HARPERS WEEKLY REVIEW

In Iraq, the sixth suicide chlorine attack in two months
killed 20 people in the Anbar province, the resurgent
Mahdi army clashed with U.S . soldiers in Sadr City,
American fighter jets bombed Shiite militiamen in
Diwaniya, and in Baghdad, a U.S. congressional delegation
outfitted with bulletproof vests, flanked by 100 soldiers
in armored Humvees, and watched over by attack
helicopters, visited a local bazaar to demonstrate the
success of the current security plan. It was, said
Representative Mike Pence (R., Ind.), just like an
“outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.” Vice
President Dick Cheney attacked the “self-appointed
strategists” in Congress who were hampering the Bush
Administration’s efforts to prolong the war in Iraq, and
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirmed that the
U.S. military was violating its “dwell time” policy, which
guarantees soldiers a year between combat postings. North
Korea ordered its diplomats to send all but one child home
as collateral against defection, and Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad released 15 abducted British
marines. Italy banned reality programming on public
television, Thailand blocked access to YouTube, and at the
CNN Center in Atlanta, a woman died after being shot in
the face by her estranged boyfriend. Lapsed Albanian
Communists were rediscovering God, Fidel Castro called
American biofuel policy an “internationalization of
genocide,” and the market price for children in India
slipped below that of buffalo.

The Food and Drug Administration proposed new labeling
rules that would allow irradiated foods to be categorized
merely as “pasteurized,” and the Supreme Court forbade the
Environmental Protection Agency to shirk its
responsibility to regulate greenhouse gases. Researchers
used infrared and atomic-emission spectroscopy, mass
spectroscopy, electron microscopy, pollen analysis, and
the leading “noses” in the perfume industry to determine
that a rib bone unearthed at the site where Joan of Arc
was burned at the stake actually belonged to an Egyptian
mummy. In Beardstown, Illinois, federal agents arrested 62
undocumented immigrants in a pork plant, and in Mount
Pleasant, Iowa, Hillary Clinton accused President George
W. Bush of “vetoing the will of the American people.”
French archaeologists were using dung-eating mites to
study ancient Incan relics, British scientists were
“baffled” by the discovery of five-footed frogs, and
Dr. Zahi Hawass of Egypt dismissed the Exodus story of the
Jews as a “myth.”

Dr. John Billings, creator of the “Billings Method” of
natural birth control and father of nine, died, and Durex,
a contraceptive company located in Knutsford, England,
began assembling a “massive” panel of volunteer testers
for its condom and lubricant products. A Chicago woman
filed suit against her dance partner for “negligent
dancing,” and the estate of deceased actor James Doohan,
who was best known for his performance as the space
mechanic “Scotty” on Star Trek, paid $495 to have his
ashes rocketed into orbit. Singer/songwriter Billy Joe
Shaver, author of such hits as “Georgia on a Fast Train”
and “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a
Diamond Someday)” was sought by police in Texas after he
shot a “drunk, aggressive stranger.” The North Carolina
Senate expressed “profound contrition” for the state’s
slave history. A 13-year-old girl in Brooklyn, New York,
was brought up on criminal mischief charges after being
caught writing the word “okay” on her school desk, and an
elementary school principal in Toronto admitted to pelting
an unruly student with feces. Polish burglars knocked over
a sex shop in Austria, then used vibrators, prophylactics,
and a vacuum cleaner to elude the police in a high-speed
car chase. XXXChurch.com, an online ministry, staged a
“Porn and Pancakes” event for evangelicals in Morton,
Illinois. Gaytanamo: Hardcore, a film set in the “sexiest
secret military prison ever,” was being sold at a discount
on the Internet. In Miami, the Department of Corrections
was housing registered sex offenders under a
bridge. Herding dogs were being used to control the
spiraling goose population in New York’s Central Park, and
a South African farmer received a 20-year sentence for
killing a man he mistakenly believed to be a baboon. The
Walt Disney Company announced that it will begin offering
“Fairy Tale” weddings to homosexuals.

– Theodore Ross
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“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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