Weekly Review

By Genevieve Smith

A Christian martyr.

Two days after three candidates and two campaign workers were kidnapped and murdered, Iraqis voted in the first national elections since 2005, choosing between 14,000 candidates running for 440 provincial offices. Two men were shot and wounded at a polling place in Sadr City, and some voters were turned away when their names could not be found on voting rolls dating from food ration lists held over from Saddam Hussein's reign. ¹ “This day is a victory for all Iraqis,” said an Iraqi general in Kirkuk. “I don't know whom to vote for,” said an inmate at Basra's Ma'qal prison, “but a sheikh wrote this number on my hand, and I will vote for this number.”^{2 3} The Republican National Committee elected its first black chairman, Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, after six rounds of voting. “Obviously the winds of change are blowing,” said a rival candidate. “For those who wish to obstruct,” said Steele, “get ready to get knocked over.”⁴ One day before the 360th anniversary of the execution of Charles I, the Illinois State Senate voted 59 to zero to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich. “I thought about Mandela, Dr. King, and Gandhi,” said Blagojevich prior to the impeachment, “and tried to put some perspective to all this, and that is what I am doing now.” Lieutenant Governor Patrick J. Quinn succeeded Blagojevich as governor of Illinois. “You want to know my philosophy?” said Quinn. “One day a peacock. The next day a feather duster.”^{5 6 7 8}

A report found that shoddy electrical work by former Halliburton subsidiary KBR led to the electrocution and death of at least one soldier,⁹ and the State Department decided not to renew Blackwater's contract in Iraq after the Iraqi government refused the security firm, whose employees shot 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007, a license to operate. “It would not be a mortal blow,” said company founder Erik Prince of his firm's imminent dismissal. “But it would hurt us.”¹⁰ The Israel Defense Forces deployed eight antelope to eat vegetation that might be hiding Hezbollah guerrillas,¹¹ and army worms stormed villages across Liberia. ¹² A New Zealand man named Chris Ogle bought a used MP3 player from a thrift shop in Oklahoma that contained U.S. Army files, including mission details and the personal information of soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. “The more I look at it,” said Ogle, “the more I see.” ¹³ In cities across Russia, anti-government protesters rallied, chanting such slogans as “The crisis is in the heads of the authorities, not in the economy.”¹⁴ ExxonMobil reported $45 billion in earnings in 2008, the largest annual profit in U.S. history;¹⁵ Wall Street was found to have distributed $18.4 billion in bonuses, its sixth largest payout ever;¹⁶ and international leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, to discuss the economic crisis. “Let's be careful,” said Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, “that we don't let this blame game get out of hand.”¹⁷ The International Monetary Fund predicted that world economic growth in 2009 would be the worst since World War II. “We now expect the global economy to come to a virtual halt,” said the IMF's chief economist. ¹⁸ The U.S. Postal Service considered cutting back deliveries to five days a week,¹⁹ and the Navy announced that President Barack Obama's new presidential helicopter was $5.1 billion over budget.²⁰ A disgruntled former Fannie Mae computer engineer was indicted for allegedly attempting to plant a “logic bomb” in the corporation's computer code,²¹ and Coca-Cola announced plans to remove the word “classic” from its packaging. ²²

Thirty-four years after first reporting on the medical condition termed “cello scrotum,” an irritation caused by playing the cello, the British Medical Journal was forced to acknowledge that the ailment does not exist. “Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realize the physical impossibility of our claim,” said Baroness Elaine Murphy, who, with her husband, created the hoax. ²³ John Updike died,²⁴ and just after the Arizona Cardinals scored their last touchdown of Superbowl XLIII (which they lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers), a cable channel in Tuscon, Arizona, interrupted the broadcast with pornography. “I just figured it was another commercial until I looked up,” said one viewer. “Then he did his little dance with everything hanging out.”²⁵ A Wisconsin judge ruled that cheerleading is a contact sport. ²⁶ Weusi McGowan, who was standing trial for robbery in a San Diego court, smeared his feces on the face of his lawyer and threw the rest at the jury box, where it hit the briefcase of juror No. 9. “That juror didn't even see it coming,” said the prosecutor. ²⁷ A homeless Louisiana man, who robbed a bank of $100 and then voluntarily turned himself in the next day and apologized, was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.²⁸ A man in Somerset, England, spent two days trapped beneath his sofa, subsisting on whiskey from a bottle that had rolled within reach. “I thought, Well this isn't too bad,” he said.²⁹ A 93-year-old man in Michigan died of hypothermia after Bay City Electric Light & Power restricted service to his home as a result of unpaid bills,³⁰ and in an elevator shaft in an abandoned building in Detroit a man was found frozen in a block of ice, with only his feet sticking out. “Yeah,” said one homeless man squatting nearby, “he's been down there since last month at least.” The fire department eventually arrived with a chainsaw, and another homeless man, when asked if he knew the deceased, said, “I don't recognize him from his shoes.”³¹