Stranger than Fiction

Two or three items in the world news today that set one a-wondering--in reverse order of interest:

1.  Cokie Roberts, noted Media Whore, "News Analyst" for NPR, said yesterday on television that:  "Americans [including Cokie Roberts] agree with Senators McCain* and Graham, that withdrawal [from Iraq] is a bad idea, and that they want to stay until we win...."  "Win"?

*Republican John McCain [quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 4/7/08]: "It [would be] 'imprudent and dangerous' to leave the combat zone too quickly."   "Combat zone"?

2.  An inquest jury has found that:  "Princess Diana was unlawfully killed due to 'gross negligence' of driver Henri Paul* and the paparazzi...."  The coroner at the inquest, Lord Justice Scott Baker, said that the princess's former butler, Paul Burrell, had lied** at its hearings.

*  There's a surveillance tape of Princess Di and her heavy-hung, rich boyfriend leaving their hotel just before the "accident," in which there is also, happenstantially, a very interesting close-up of Henri Paul: Paul is clearly drunk or drug-impaired.  My first thought was, "Well, obviously, when you're working for a swine like Dodi Fayed and you're drunk, you can't just say, 'Sorry, Mr. Fayed, I'm too drunk to drive tonight,' because he'll fire you.  And unless you fuck up too bad, chances are he won't even notice that you're drunk--a man with all that high-cost nooky on his hands isn't going to be paying much attention to the help."  My second thought was darker, less distinct, and creepier:  "That was drug-impairment, not drunkenness. There was something in Paul's demeanor which suggested deliberation and purpose.  He was scared by something that he had to do--but more scared of what would happen if he didn't do it."

**Mr. Burrell said that the Queen told him, in a conversation several months after the accident, "There are powers at work in this country of which we have no knowledge."  He also said that Princess Diana's mother, Mrs. Shand Kydd, in a phone conversation that the princess had asked him to listen-in on on a phone extension, accused Diana of 'messing around' with Muslim men. "She called the princess a whore and said she was 'messing around with effing Muslim men.'" 

3.  All right, I did make this up (See blog 2/16/08).  My purpose was to destroy the Roman Catholic Church.  It makes you wonder, though, what Cardinal Schoenbrunn's purpose is.  VIENNA (Reuters) April 7, 2008 - Cardinal Christoph Schoenbrunn and curators of the Cathedral Museum of St. Stephan's have come under heavy fire, "a barrage of angry messages" from museum visitors and Catholic websites, for a retrospective [exhibit] honoring 'Austria's cherished artist' Alfred Hrdlicka.  The Church hastily removed a homoerotic version of the Last Supper [entitled 'Leonardo's Last Supper, restored by Pier Pasolini'] described by Hrdlicka as "a homosexual orgy of the Apostles" [which showed cavorting Apostles sprawling over the dining table and masturbating each other.  Hrdlicka says he represented the men in this way because there are no women in Leonardo's original painting]. But the protest has continued, much to the surprise [!] of the museum's curators.  The museum's director, defends both Hrdlicka's work and his decision to host the artist's controversial versions of Biblical imagery in a museum tied to the Catholic Church: "We think Hrdlicka is entitled to represent people in this drastic, carnal way," Bernhard Boehler said....He said that the museum never intended to offend people but that art should be allowed to provoke a debate.  "I don't see any blasphemy here," he said, gesturing at a Crucifixion picture showing a soldier simultaneously beating Jesus and holding His genitals [beating Him off?].  "People can imagine what they want to."  [And they do!]  Boehler says that picture drew particular criticism from some visitors, along with a sculpture of Jesus on the cross without a face or loincloth.  A communist and an atheist, Hrdlicka says, "if the Cathedral Museum is having problems now, it's not really my affair," and he praised the director for being "strong."  Boehler says the "debate" can be compared to the Danish Cartoon Row.  Indeed.