Sick World
May 1st, 2008The news that Nelson Mandela is on our terrorist watch-list is more embarrassing than sinister, but it was the last thing I expected to see when I checked the news this morning. Then I read this story about an Australian politician who doubles as a chair-sniffer. On my way to the University I picked up a copy of the Chicago Reader and Dan Savage wrote in his column this week that he couldn’t find right-wing outrage over the disturbing polygamous sect that was busted in Texas. I agreed that it was odd and shameful for people who are up-in-arms over gay marriage to ignore such a story of rape and polygamy. Next, I came across a new article on the Austrian man who has imprisoned his daughter in his cellar all her life and fathered children with her, where he threatened to “gas” her and forced her to write a letter at one point saying that she’d come back to her home in time (he’d told the family that she fled to “join a cult”). There are strange earthquakes occurring in Reno, and just a couple of weeks ago there was an earthquake in central Illinois that I felt here in Chicago in the middle of the night. I have a variety end-of-the-semester tasks to take care of, much research on Herbert Hoover and a mild tummy ache. I don’t know what to make of today!