TW3

September 12th, 2007

That Was The Week That Was … all over the place; at least there were no reports of cannibalism and the like — we get the odd as well as the absurd on this list [you will note that the first snip listed fits both categories.]

And me? I think the Pope should put a sock in it, although I would like to wave a rib in celebration at Tutu’s barbecue … perhaps it’s a matter of fashion; I think the Pope looks like a trussed goose most of the time, and Desmond has that jolly, hat-askew, rumpled demeanor. ONE of them is also wearing a perpetual smile — I’ll leave it to you to guess which. So, maybe not fashion after all … maybe disposition and character.

Meanwhile, I’m left pondering the human-animal hybrid with a sense of shock ‘n awe, and considerable apprehension.

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW

President George W. Bush attended the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation Forum in Sydney, where he gave a
speech referring to APEC as OPEC and thanking Australian
Prime Minister John Howard for sending Austrian troops to
Iraq. A B-52 bomber plane flew across the United States,
mistakenly loaded with nuclear-armed missiles, and
“bio-warfare” chemicals found at a United Nations office
in New York turned out to be cleaning supplies. Police in
Germany claimed to have foiled a massive terror plot that
would have targeted U.S. facilities in the country, and Al
Qaeda claimed responsibility for two suicide bombs that
killed at least 50 people in Algeria. AIDS victims were
being buried alive in Papua New Guinea. “If someone comes
back to the village and they have HIV/AIDS,” an Australian
reporter claimed, “the people blame this on witchcraft.”
Muslim students in northeastern India were studying in the
local graveyard to improve their test scores, and two
women accused of casting spells on a South African school
were burned to death by students on the school’s football
field. Archbishop Desmond Tutu became the patron of South
Africa’s Barbecue Day. “This,” he said, “is something that
can unite us.”

Frances Fragos Townsend, the top homeland security adviser
to President Bush, said that a new videotape released by
Osama bin Laden showed that the Al Qaeda leader was
“virtually impotent.” Viagra turned 15, a convicted
California voyeur sued police to get back his porn
collection, and the U.S. Justice Department said that
Internet providers should be allowed to charge more for
certain types of traffic such as movie and television
downloads. Facebook accounted for 1 percent of all
Internet traffic, and police were cracking down on
Craigslist hookers. “Technology has worked its way into
every profession,” said a Long Island detective,
“including the oldest.” A judge in England called for all
U.K. residents and visitors to be placed in the national
DNA database, and an Alabama judge was accused of removing
inmates from their cells so that he might take them to the
storage closet in his office and paddle them. A corrupt
official in China was caught plagiarizing his trial
apology from another corrupt official. A routine X-ray of
a Chinese woman’s body uncovered 26 sewing needles,
presumably placed there during her infancy by her
grandparents, who were disappointed that she was not a
boy. The Friends of Jesus went to Kenya’s High Court in a
bid to clear the Messiah of the blasphemy charge that
resulted in his crucifixion. Israel announced that it
would grant citizenship to hundreds of refugees from
Darfur, and scientists blamed the recent massive honey bee
die-offs on an Israeli virus. The Pope demanded more
respect for Sundays.

Spokesmen for Larry Craig said that the senator, caught
flirting in a men’s room, would resign, then that he
wouldn’t, and then that he would. His former chief of
staff claimed that Craig had been planning to quit
anyway. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R., Wis.), heir
to the Kimberley-Clark fortune, won the lottery for the
third time, and all the inmates in an English prison were
to be given 2 pounds spending money for good behavior
during a prison-officer strike. The first Starbucks opened
in Russia, and Sarajevo artists erected a 10-foot statue
of a can of meat that represented food donated from abroad
during the war. “That stuff was so bad,” said one retiree,
“that if your cat ate it, his fur would fall off.”
Ethiopian authorities planned to use strychnine-laced meat
to kill tens of thousands of stray dogs in Addis Ababa
before the Coptic New Year. Nepal’s state-run airline,
after experiencing technical problems with one of its
planes, sacrificed two goats to appease the Hindu sky
god. A San Diego woman was reportedly considering a
lawsuit against Southwest Airlines after she was asked to
leave one of their flights because attendants deemed her
skirt and sweater too revealing. Tenor Luciano Pavarotti
died, as did writer Madeleine L’Engle, and scientists in
Liverpool found that rock stars are twice as likely to die
prematurely as ordinary people. The United Kingdom’s Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority agreed to allow the
creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for research. The
British government complained that the Taliban was using
weapons that had been made in China, and Mattel recalled
11 more Chinese-produced lead-laced toys. Psychiatrists
announced that diagnoses of bipolar disorder in
U.S. children have increased by 4,000 percent over the
last 10 years. A high school student in New Hampshire
asked John McCain if the senator was too old to be
president. “Thanks for the question, you little jerk,”
McCain replied. “You’re drafted!”

– Chantal Clarke
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/09/WeeklyReview2007-09-11

“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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