I often feel the urge to comment on current events. But then as a regular reader of the Harper’s Magazine Weekly Review, it has become quite apparent to me that commentary is quite unnecessary. The bare facts speak for themselves. Here’s an excerpt from the latest installment:
An expert witness in the Robert Blake murder case testified that he once crawled into a cage filled with crack-smoking monkeys, and two former caretakers of Koko, the gorilla that can speak in sign language, sued for harassment. The caretakers claim they were pressured into exposing their breasts to satisfy Koko’s nipple fetish. The ban on fox hunting went into effect in England and Wales and was expected to be widely ignored. A poll found that Americans believe Ronald Reagan to be the greatest president in history, and Hunter S. Thompson killed himself with a .45. The British Navy was actively seeking gay recruits, dogs in Australia were licking toads to get high, and a luxury hotel was scheduled to open at Berchtesgaden. An eighty-year-old Australian doctor had “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” tattooed across his chest, and in Hong Kong, the bough of a lucky “wishing tree” broke off, scratching a four-year-old boy’s head and breaking a man’s leg.
For those who prefer hard numbers, there’s also the Harper’s Index. Again, here’s an appetizer:
Number of House members in 1979 who voted against making Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday : 133
Number who are still in the House : 9
Number who are Vice President : 1
Percentage of South African farmland owned by whites in 1994 and today, respectively : 87, 84
Ratio of the number of people in Haiti to the number of permanent full-time jobs there : 80:1
Rank of Wal-Mart among Mexico’s largest private employers : 1
Number of states, provinces, or territories of the United States, Canada, and Mexico that lack a McDonald’s : 1