Got back from the bakery and the grocery (loaf of apple-spice bread from a brick oven bakery, some grapes, some pears, and a hunk of gorgonzola with BIG BLUE VEINS that look like something from a science project gone bad- I can not wait to eat this combo for dinner) and checked my email. Muslimpundit heard my plaintive wail, and has reurned. Unfortunately, I checked Common Dreams to see what the fruits and nuts were up to, and Heather Mallick is back, too. In her latest ode to inanity, she proclaims that The Heart of Darkness Beats Clear and Steady in Guantanamo Bay.
This latest offering ranges in tone from patently absurd to crude sexual psychobabble, and here is a smidgen:
Some commentators, ranging in my classification from Old Scolds to Classic Haters to Completely Off Their Nut, have said that hooding, shackling, sleep deprivation etc. don’t constitute torture.
I love this cavalier attitude toward the prolonged suffering of other people. These are commentators who loudly complain about the pain of dieting or the cost of hotel room mini-bars or the tedium of reading an actual book. But the pain endured by utterly helpless, despised prisoners arouses a kind of gassy pleasure in them, that same swelling satisfaction I saw on the taxi driver’s face.
I have always thought that political, as well as personal, cruelty has a sexual element to it. Cruelty, like extreme sexual desire, is a failure of empathy, a grabbing of gratification for oneself that is very difficult to control. When you feel this surge in yourself, always beware. It will end in tears, and depending on how you expressed your contempt for whoever was in your hot, little hands, they will often be your own tears.
Go read the whole thing, then, to cleanse your palate, go read what Will Warren at Unremitting Verse has to offer us about Dear Miss Mallick. To prime your appetite for derision of Miss Mallick, here is the first verse for those of you who have never seen it:
Heather Mallick, Heather Mallick,
Do you have a hole cephalic?
Is your cranium still clicking?
Have your brain cells ceased their ticking?
Are your neurons all a-twisty?
Is your vision foggy, misty?
Is your mind becoming cloudy
From your efforts to be Dowd-y?
Readers must note that Miss Mallick is still rather fond of Nazi allusions, and they are once again rife in this latest aria of angst.