Tuesday, April 29, 2008

In all the horror of the Austrian father who imprisoned his own children, born of his own daughter, I find myself thinking of the power of the songs that stay in your head even if you don't want them to. I have to assume that this is all part of my not wanting to think about what went on in that house for all those years. It was reported that Herr Fritzl, the father/grandfather, was an "electrical engineer with interests in property management and retail underwear". So, like that awful song that sticks in your head, I will always think of Fritzl as the man who imprisoned his children and had a side interest in retail underwear. I noticed, also, that the children hidden in the basement were reported never to have been to school "or a disco". In what world does the notion of freqenting discos (are there any discos anywhere anymore?) automatically follow the shock of learning that a child has never been to school? Surely the next thought is about the child's health, or the child's ability to speak or interact with others. No, The Times of London is most interested in how a child will cope with a world he/she has never seen given that he/she has never been to a disco. How will the child cope? I mean, getting over the awful health problems, the psychological earthquakes, that's all fairly straight forward, but how does one cope with a lack of Gloria Gaynor? Who writes these articles? And how did every newspaper sink to the level of the Sun or the National Inquirer?

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