News Of The Weird

The e-mails and news items appear frequently enough that we have grown used to them: reports on seemingly stupid crimes or events, the odd statistic that points out how greedy or silly or misdirected someone or something is, the urban legend or modern folk tale that highlights the weird or misbegotten. We read this stuff and accept it as part of our social environment, as one more tidbit which helps us laugh at the folly and pain of others and which reassures us of our own intelligence and well-being. We would never be so dumb, poor or outrageous to do that!

Let's look at the real news of the weird which this nonsense helps to cover up. We can find it in today's headlines.

It turns out that the Bush administration believed that the president could use the military to conduct raids in the US without search warrants. The New York Times--the newspaper of record in the US--considers it newsworthy that a few anonymous people in Cuba reported seeing an old man walking with an entourage in Havana and think that this may be Fidel. Fidel has become the new Bigfoot. Putin's party in Russia stole regional elections and got away with it: if the US protested, it didn't make the press. Tariq Aziz, the Christian envoy for Saddam Hussein, was found not-guilty of serious crimes after having spent almost 6 years in prison. He was returned to prison to face additional charges. Former Vice-President Cheney may have to give a legal deposition relating to the arrest of a protester at a resort in 2006. Blagojevich has a book deal but turned down a job offer with the Joliet Jackhammers, a minor league team. The CIA destroyed 92 tapes showing the torture of two prisoners. The tapes were kept in a safe in Thailand. Alaska and 5 other states have no laws allowing convicts to access DNA testing in order to prove their innocence. Alaska is holding a man on a rape charge while admitting that DNA evidence exonerates him. Pfizer says that there is nothing wrong with them making private payments to 149 Harvard faculty, financing research there and photographing students protesting big pharma influence on campus.