The Electron Pencil

Orphans

Don’t you just love how we’re howling about the Tsarnaev boys being from Chechnya, and that Chechnyan president holding a presser to say Hey wait a minute, they were raised in your country, so they were Americans?

Nobody wants to believe a couple of jimokes from their beloved land could be so callous and craven as to kill and blow the legs off innocent foot race spectators just to make some as yet undetermined point.

The Chechen President

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[By the way, doesn’t Ramzan Kadyrov look as though he’d be equally at home trying to sell you an extended service warranty at Best Buy as being boss of that Russian hillbilly republic?]

And the headlines about the Tsarnaev kin being so shocked by the allegations that some of them are even speculating it’s all a monstrous set-up really are over the top. That kind of corporate media follow up to a tragic crime story is getting a tad trite. What, do they now teach kids in journalism school to go to accused terrorists’ or mass murderers’ relatives and ask “Did you ever think your boys would do such a thing?” Of course people are shocked beyond belief that someone they’ve sat down to Thanksgiving dinner or whatever holiday gorging the Chechnyans enjoy could perpetrate an atrocity.

On the other hand, admit it, you can name one or two people off the top of your head this very second who, should they be accused of opening fire at a packed Wal-mart, you’d think “I knew it! I was just waiting for that crazy bastard to snap!” I’ve got two guys in mind right now.

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Money Changes Everything

While we’re on the subject Chechnyan prez Kadyrov is a member of a very exclusive club. Several human rights organizations have named him and his henchmen one of the most brutal regimes in the world.

And there’s yet another Chechen-USA tie. It seems Kadyrov threw himself a mother of a birthday bash a couple of years ago. Kadyrov’s minions built him a floating stage on the Sunzha River in the city of Grozny so that luminaries from around the world could serenade him for polluting the human gene pool for yet another year.

Turns out Oscar®-winning actress Hilary Swank was paid a reported six-figures to attend the fete and and tell the brutal boss what a swell egg he is.

Who’s The Boss?

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“I hope to have a film premiere here. Happy birthday, Mr. President,” she gushed.

Natch, Swank took a beating in the world press for it. Hell, her public relations firm even dropped her. I mean, you’ve really got to screw up royally to make PR flacks refuse to hold your hand through a crisis. Swank went on to throw her manager and agents under the bus in the fallout from the fiasco, firing them for setting the deal up.

She said she had no idea what a big bully Kadyrov was, this despite the fact that she, like many of her Hollywood colleagues, runs around between pictures telling anyone who’ll listen that she’s a Concerned Citizen of the World. Kadyrov has been reported to condone torture and honor killings of females among other pastimes. When reporters suggested Swank might have been a bit lax in boning up on Kadyrov, she snapped, “I read! I do my provisory research!” Which must be something because no one had previously heard of such a thing as “provisory” research.

The Noted Provisory Researcher

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Just goes to show that a person can be a brilliant artist and still be a dope.

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Spoiled Brats

Do I need to say how execrable I think that homeless-themed party the Kappa Delta cabal of XY-chromosome ingrates threw for themselves this week was?

Smudged T-Shirts And Stained Souls

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As one columnist wrote on Jezebel: “How much lower could spoiled sorority girls go?” This after referring to a Penn State sorority Mexican-themed party not six months ago. And by Mexican-themed, I mean Frito-Bandito-esque

The answer to this rhetorical query is the orgy of entitlement sponsored by our very own gang of sisters whose house webpage tells us “Our chapter is composed of amazing women, each of whom brings something special to our chapter.” Ignoring the self-reflexive redundancy in that sentence, one must wonder which of these amazing women had the bright idea of honoring our esteemed homeless citizens.

See, this is how prejudices propagate and grow. Prior to this, I’d already harbored in my heart a knee-jerk loathing of both sorority sisters and fraternity brothers. I don’t like exclusive clubs, whose basic raison d’etre is We’re better than you are. Bullies generally side with the majority and the homeless will never be part of the majority. The Kappa Deltas chose the easiest target they could think of.

Amazing women? Amazing, maybe, in a way, but not women. That would imply maturity.

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Chapter & Verse

BTW, IU poet Ross Gay and some pals are trekking down to Louisville today to catch a reading by fellow bard Chris Mattingly.

The nephew of former New York Yankee great and current Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, the younger frere has released a new book of poems entitled “Scuffletown.” The reading, if you’re feeling ambitious, will be held at an old-time beer-and-booze joint called Seidenfaden’s in the River City.

Chris Mattingly

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The Mattinglys originally hailed from the Evansville area.

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