If I were still in Mississippi, discussing world affairs and current events with my family across a kitchen island loaded with divinity and other Stuckey’s delights, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that one of my ever-so-thoughtful, ever-so-Baptist brothers–probably the former missionary, but who knows–would credit God/Yaweh with this whole tsunami disaster thing. “Hallelujah!” he’d shout, a little too loudly. “This is a sign from the Almighty! God is tellin’ them people to stop worshippin’ monkeys and crocodiles and other such nonsense and get with the program. They have done brung it on themselves.“
Unfortunately, I doubt that’d be the first Pat Robertson-esque discussion of the matter. In fact, chances are that conversations just like that are taking place in countless breakfast nooks and Waffle Houses across the country as we speak. Er, type.
On a more compassionate note, Tyler has written a touching elegy to the late, great Susan Sontag. The author may be gone, but her work survives, giving thousands upon thousands of future graduate students great ideas to misinterpret.
sturtle [dot] com 