I don’t mean to make light, but levity often stares back at the face of awfulness. Blue Wren reports:
Recently, a National Public Radio reporter in Baghdad informed listeners that religious extremists murdered a shepherd because, well, he wouldn’t diaper his goats to hide their naughty bits. And a grocer was killed because the stalks of celery in his market were too close to the tomatoes, lewdly suggesting – the horror – erect male genitalia.
Iraq is now in midst of civil war. They’re killing each other because of immodest goats and indecent vegetables. Simplistic? Yes. True? Yes.
That cannot be correct, can it it? I know it isn’t right.
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I was slack-jawed when I heard the piece on NPR as I drove to work on Aug. 7 during Morning Edition with Steve Inskeep. The reporter was John Hendren.
From the transcripts:
“This is how staggeringly pointless the killing in Iraq is getting: shepherds in the rural western Baghdad neighborhood of Gazalea have recently been murdered, according to locals, for failing to diaper their goats. Apparently the sexual tension is so high in regions where Sheikhs take a draconian view of Shariah law, that they feel the sight of naked goats poses an unacceptable temptation. They blame the goats.
“I’ve spent nearly a year here, on more than a dozen visits since the early days of the war, and that seemed about as preposterous as Iraq could get until I heard about the grocery store in east Baghdad. The grocer and three others were shot to death and the store was firebombed because he suggestively arranged his vegetables.
“I didn’t believe it at first. Firebombings of liquor stores are common, and I figured there must’ve been one next door. But an Iraqi colleague explained matter-of-factly that Shiite clerics had recently distributed a flyer directing groceries how to display their food.
Standing up a celery stalk near a couple of tomatoes in a way that might – to the profoundly repressed – suggest an aroused male, is now a capital offense.”
You can listen to Hendren’s story here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5622900
Thanks Wren. You know I wasn’t calling your truthiness into question, don’t you?
Truthfulness? Anyway, nice look.
No; truthiness. A word made famous by Stephen Colbert. He’s the guy who did the White House correspondents’ dinner this year, among other things. Very, very good, IMHO.
I have listened to this. Note that the John Hendren finishes the report by praising the american troops.
This comes just so perferctly well. After the rape of the 14yo girl and the impatience of american public over the civil war.
This is all iraqis fault, they must be sicks people.