Monkey Sex? It's the Bomb!

October has been a tough month for politicians. Today we highlight the stories of three pols, one in Pakistan, one in India and one in America. Their stories offer us insight into life and death in politics and in the countries in which they worked.

First, in Pakistan, Bhutto did not die but many of her supporters (and maybe a couple of people who REALLY did not like her) were killed. She was fortunate enough to have just gone in to take a rest in her armored transport immediately before the bombs went off. It seems very early for either her, under a false flag operation, or Musharraf to make a move like this that will raise political tensions sharply. Those are not the only two parties with means and motivation to pursue such an attack but if you look at who stands to gain, those two really stand out.

Second, in India, a BJP politician falls to his death during a monkey attack. While they are very real, very scary and a tricky municipal issue in several Indian cities, there is something very basically funny about marauding packs of monkeys. My professor tells a funny story about eating bananas with his cousin on the roof of his house when he was a boy in Benaras. As they sat eating the bananas, they spied a pack of monkeys running across roofs towards them. The two boys had no time to go and hide so they crammed all the remaining bananas in their mouths and stood their ground, hoping the monkeys would leave them alone. When the leader of the monkeys arrived, my professor tried to be as still as he could while this monkey searched around. Finally, the monkey came over to where my professor stood, looked at him and slapped him in the cheek. The young boy spat banana everywhere and the monkeys feasted. The news story is more somber but for Muslims, there is a certain schadenfreude that comes with a BJP politician dieing as a result of the monkeys that cannot be killed because of the sensibilities of the hardcore Hindus that the BJP represents.

Finally, back home. There is not one good news source about this story so I am breaking an unofficial rule of the blog and linking to another blog. Rev. Gary Aldridge wound up dead as a result of suffocation
when he was hogtied, wearing two complete wetsuits and a diving mask. It was only after he failed to show up for church services that he was found. Normally, a minister would not be considered a political operator (ideally) and this would be a tremendous tragedy rather than a politically poignant anecdote. When you work for Jerry Falwell and get behind what his movement is striving for, dieing in this way makes you a metaphor.