Smoky opium perfume, an oriental blend of spices and fruits, gold, sandalwood, plum, coriander, myrrh, patchouli, cinnamon, pepper, and human blood... Music by Zakir Hussain and show by Alonzo King Lines ballet. Is it really different dancing in New York City than Jerusalem or Dubai? Well sculptured brown skin male-torso-beauty, shaved head, magnificent muscles, half naked, with his waist slaved in heavy blood-red, and long taffeta skirt... is just magnetizing the public with his oriental-spicy Scheherazade ballet on East Coast tour.
Scheherazade. Every day Persian King would marry a new beauty and send yesterday’s wife to be executed, as a relief after having found his first wife cheated. He had killed one thousand such women by the time he saw Scheherazade, well bred lover who studied philosophy, history, politics and arts. She volunteered to spend one night with the King to save other women’s life with her wisdom, imagination and clever idea.
Why “stoning to death” on YouTube is more shocking to Americans than their “electric chair” or “lethal injection”? There are still 35 “death penalty states” in the US. George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 when, as governor of Texas, he had presided over the largest number of state executions ever carried out in a single 12-month period (a total of 40!). Almost 1 legal execution of human being a week!
Support for death penalty allows politicians to show that they support law enforcement and they are cost conscious. As they say “it’s easier and cheaper governing crime” with death penalty “handy”. And stimulating emotional hysteria around each process helps tremendously in maximizing the votes. This cynical “political exchange" and cultural expression of local American communities seem to be obvious benefits of the "death penalty" in the US. As Professor Garland concludes "penal instrument that puts persons to death became a peculiar institution that puts death into discourse for political and cultural purposes". American Vertigo... And weekly executions in Texas are not much different from today's stoning to death in Asia.
