Last weekend I read the following three items in succession in the papers.
One: a man was detained on 17 charges after a violent incident on a highway. He had 349 prior convictions and was last jailed (for 18 months) in 2006 for an assault on a child. His own. And he's on the streets?
Two: Frank Skinner discusses capital punishment with a degree of levity necessary to make the subject palatable to the liberal sensibility, creating an 'id' to utter what he cannot: "My liberal ego takes a breather in the passenger seat and my right-wing id takes the wheel. ... Many liberals will be horrified by my id's nasty thought processes ...".
Three: Haiti. It was the picture: a three-month-old child, naked, face-in to a female rescuer, skin white with concrete dust like a small, precious, live statue. Smudging the dust at the base of the its back, a dark green stain told of the child's unutterable wait as it lay miraculously uncrushed beneath God knows how many tonnes of twisted concrete.
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No connection between these articles at all.
But why may a man with hundreds of convictions including violent assault draw breath while a small probably-orphaned child soils itself in dreadful aloneness awaiting death or rescue?
One: a man was detained on 17 charges after a violent incident on a highway. He had 349 prior convictions and was last jailed (for 18 months) in 2006 for an assault on a child. His own. And he's on the streets?
Two: Frank Skinner discusses capital punishment with a degree of levity necessary to make the subject palatable to the liberal sensibility, creating an 'id' to utter what he cannot: "My liberal ego takes a breather in the passenger seat and my right-wing id takes the wheel. ... Many liberals will be horrified by my id's nasty thought processes ...".
Three: Haiti. It was the picture: a three-month-old child, naked, face-in to a female rescuer, skin white with concrete dust like a small, precious, live statue. Smudging the dust at the base of the its back, a dark green stain told of the child's unutterable wait as it lay miraculously uncrushed beneath God knows how many tonnes of twisted concrete.
*
No connection between these articles at all.
But why may a man with hundreds of convictions including violent assault draw breath while a small probably-orphaned child soils itself in dreadful aloneness awaiting death or rescue?
It boggles the mind.
ReplyDeleteThe day after that terrible quake, as I aimlessly changed TV channels, I came across some morning show which had two women discuss in all earnest the new 'in' color for eye shadow (apparently it's purple). Changing back to the news channel and seeing the devastation in Haiti, the enormous gap between the two topics nearly blew my mind.
Mind-boggling indeed, Barbara.
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