TW3

January 16th, 2008

That Was The Week That Was … odd. And this quote, the last entry here, tells us why:

“What is odd and what is normal is changing.”

Amen and Amen.

Jude

HARPERS WEEKLY REVIEW

Charges of a rigged presidential election triggered
violence along tribal lines in Kenya, leading to more than
700 deaths and the displacement of 250,000
Kenyans. Opposition leader Raila Odinga, who lost the
election to incumbent Mwai Kibaki, said that his first
cousin Barack Obama had called him twice to express his
concern, “despite being in the middle of the very busy New
Hampshire primary.” Obama and Mike Huckabee were the
surprise winners of the Iowa caucuses. “None of this
worries me,” said Rudy Giuliani, who came in sixth place
in the Republican caucus. “September 11, there were times
I was worried.” John McCain and a tearful Hillary Clinton
won the New Hampshire primaries. “You look at me,
September 11,” said Giuliani when asked if he would ever
cry in public, “there were times in which it was
impossible not to feel the emotion.” G.O.P. candidate
Vermin Supreme picked up 41 votes in the New Hampshire
primary, and Dennis Kucinich demanded and was granted a
recount. Visiting the Middle East, President George
W. Bush urged Gulf state leaders to join him in
confronting Iran, “before it’s too late.” Bush, guarded by
ten thousand policemen in Jerusalem, told Condoleezza Rice
that the United States should have bombed Auschwitz, and
was flown by helicopter to Bethlehem so that he could pass
through a tiny Door of Humility and pray at the
traditionally venerated birthplace of Jesus
Christ. Guardian critic Michael Billington wrote that the
musical version of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which opens
next month in Spain, might be a bad idea, citing a New
York stage adaptation of the book during which an audience
member shouted to Nazi searchers, “She’s in the attic!”

The American Dialect Society voted “subprime” the word of
the year, and Merrill Lynch reported that the United
States had already entered a recession. For the first time
since the 1800s the average Briton was earning more than
the average American, even though the pound was at an
all-time low against the euro. Starbucks fired its CEO and
announced that it would start to open fewer than its usual
six stores per day. The World Bank said that the
prosperity of China and other emerging markets would help
soften the coming global economic downturn, and Pat
Robertson predicted that China will convert to
Christianity. “God’s going to give us China,” he
said. “China will be the largest Christian nation on
earth.” The Chinese government expelled more than five
hundred people from the Communist Party for violating the
country’s one-child policy, South Asia was suffering from
severe food shortages, and the Australian government
refused to provide compensation to Aborigines (who until
1967 were governed under flora and fauna laws) who were
stolen from their parents as children. Keepers at the
Nuremberg Zoo, under criticism for allegedly allowing
polar bear mothers to eat and abandon their young,
announced that they would hand-rear an at-risk cub but
also made clear that they do not want a repeat of the
Berlin Zoo’s Knut-mania. Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son,
Bilawal, asked the media to leave him alone after he was
made head of his mother’s party, and Pakistani President
Pervez Musharraf blamed Bhutto for her own
assassination. “For standing up outside the car, I think
it was she to blame alone,” he said. “Nobody else.” Sir
Edmund Hillary, who in 1953 became the first person to
climb Mount Everest, along with Tenzing Norgay, died at
age 88.

A victim of Hurricane Katrina was suing the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers for $3,000,000,000,000,000 after the
Corps admitted that it had done a poor job designing the
broken New Orleans levees. The Museum of Bogota in
Colombia opened an exhibit dedicated to laziness, and
scientists in Houston discovered a vaccine that makes
cocaine no fun. It was revealed that a single trader
seeking bragging rights caused oil to reach a record high
of $100 a barrel, and Tata Motors unveiled a $2,500
automobile in India, a potential market of 1.1 billion
people. A U.S. study found that biofuels could be produced
from a fast-growing grass and would emit up to 94 percent
less carbon dioxide than gasoline, a British artist
exhibited 55 “beautiful and delicate” canvases of his
ejaculate sprinkled with carbon dust, and French customs
officials seized 224,000 fake anti-impotence
pills. Forty-seven U.S. senators were fighting for the
return of guns to national parks and wildlife
refuges. Soldiers were being sent to Afghanistan wearing
high-tech helmets that gather data on how bomb blasts
impact their brains, and it was revealed that Blackwater
dropped riot-control gas on U.S. soldiers in Iraq in
2005. “This,” said Army Captain Kincy Clark, “was
decidedly uncool.” Scientists from the American
Astronomical Society attended their annual meeting and
agreed that the universe is bizarre and violent. “This is
the glory of the universe,” said the association’s
president. “What is odd and what is normal is changing.”

– Chantal Clarke
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/WeeklyReview2008-01-15

“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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Entry Filed under: Political Waves