Who Would?

  Take a byline, that is, for an unspeakably fucking shite story like this one?

Cerebral palsy sufferer broke both legs on 'healing pilgrimage'

A cerebral palsy sufferer took a pilgrimage to Lourdes in the hope it would help her condition returned home with two broken legs after falling from a hoist.

Now, don't get my irritation wrong: I know The Telegraph is a notoriously shitty paper whose web site regularly dips its head below even the sewer-level standard the daily maintains--at time printing "scoops" its reporters imagined or made up (presumably to fill daily stories quotas editors set. I'm assuming there are quotas, because there's no explaining why on earth any media would churn out a lot of the fecal-splattered garbage the The Telegraph's site does otherwise.)

So my vexation isn't over the discovery that The Telegraph isn't struggling to reverse the risible reputation it suffers: however ugly to watch, self-mutilation is considered a right of free people and organizations. What hacks me off is how the above story also contributes the spiraling level of  journalism generally by taking that gradual dive to a stunning new low of retardatia. The piece focuses on people sufficiently fucked up enough to think going to Lourdes seems like a logical method of being cured of irreversible maladies, and coming away from that even more fucked up after the Feebos who operate the entire faith addict allow A Terrible Accident to happen, causing even more injury and handicap to the chode who'd gone there due to her no-hope status in the first place. Sad, I suppose, if you happen to be the tweak involved or their family, but pretty damned predictable on a number of levels if you think about it. Lourdes is Desperate Central. People who go there are reaching so far it's evident bad shit's gonna eventually happen (especially in the constant absence of miraculous shit never happening). It's like going to a faith healing convention for incontinents and coming away cheesed off when your slacks wind up inundated--or lavishly splashed-upon--when retention doesn't magically descend all everyone as expected.

The point being--empathy for their initial condition notwithstanding--the people featured in this story are idiots who fucked up their lives further by doing more idiot things, and wind up victimized by the lameness of fellow idiots. Then they complain about that and...The Telegraph decides it's major news.

Know why? Because The Telegraph is a fucking idiot publication, that--to boot--assumes anyone who'd read it must be a fucking idiot, too. And based on this story, I'm thinking that may be correct. That raises the question "why do people read The Telegraph?", which in turn sparks and rhetorical query serving both as an answer--and title of this post. 

Oh, and since we're speaking about Lourdes and miracles (and since I haven't quite emptied my bucket of bile just yet), what's keeping Madonna (the singer, not the mameleh of Jesus) from dispatching her kid to the grotto to see if Bernadette Soubirou can work any magic that laser treatment and Nair obviously ain't conjuring up? This child gets any more hirsute, she's going to have to braid her face.

Comments

[Your very sad, disappointed mother or father]

God, you’re mean.

Meanwhile, the kid’s a Neanderthal, but still.

[sarah swift]

I think you are the one fucked up matey. There is nothing wrong with people seeking faith to attempt to heal themselves, even if that doesn't happen, at least they are receiving comfort from their belief. And as an afterthought, think on this; recent studies undertaken in the science community, have discovered that the placebo effect, works with pain relief etc, even when the recipient of the placebo pill knows that it is just a sugar pill. Put that in your pipe and choke on it, you vile repugnant person. So therefore, as the scientists do not understand the reasons why this happens yet, a person traveling to Lourdes, believing they will be cured of all or some of their problems, actually may be healed through this "miracle", purely because they know it will work. Just like the sugar pill people. Sha-nai-ap! (This is a certified oh snap moment. SJS publications inc. all rights reserved.)