Word: dahmer
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...think any of us would be safer in a closet with Judge Souter than we would be in an automobile with Ted Kennedy." Any member of the Kennedy family is vulnerable to Limbaugh's scorn, and in the unlikeliest contexts. Last week Rush noted that accused murderer-cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer would plead innocent by reason of insanity. "That's like finding William Kennedy Smith guilty of rape," he opined, "and then having a trial to see if he was horny...
...case came to light two weeks ago -- just as Milwaukee mass-murderer Jeffrey Dahmer was making headlines -- when Louisiana police arrested Evans. He told them he had kidnapped, raped and strangled Beatrice Routh, a 10-year- old homeless girl, on Aug. 1. As proof, he led police to her body in a grassy field off a rural Mississippi highway. Last week a murder charge in the Routh case was filed against Evans in Mississippi. Federal kidnapping charges will follow this week...
...balance of the ethical ecosystem. Monsters, therefore, were created to teach lessons. And they can still be pedagogical -- even in an age that no longer believes in the gods or their messengers. Our misfortune is that monsters need not look monstrous. Hence, schoolboys in Africa. Hence, Jeffrey Dahmer in Milwaukee, who, with his strong cheekbones and broad shoulders, is not some finny Creature from the Black Lagoon...
...Dahmer and the schoolboys are monsters, what lessons do they point to? Kenyan society is searching for reasons for its nightmare. Was it "abominable male chauvinism," as a local journalist put it, that brought on the crime? The boys, it seemed, were taking revenge on the girls for their refusal to join them in a quarrel with school officials. The logic: it is all right to rape women -- to kill them even -- if they do not obey male authority. The ability to inflict violence is the proof of power. There is a "logic" too to Dahmer's crime. Raised...
...horror can have a tonic effect, thus the Aristotelian theory of tragic catharsis. But very often, we inure ourselves to the terrible. For one, we can choose to misread the implication. In Milwaukee, for example, public reaction has included the harassment of local gays, the very community victimized by Dahmer. A Wisconsin gay activist reports receiving a phone message saying, "You got what you deserved. You're going to get more...