Tendentious

ARMIN MEIWES, CHARLIE TUNA, AND THE EWWW THAT SURPASSETH ALL UNDERSTANDING

The Miewes trial verdict is in, and this blog's favorite cannibal has had the book thrown at him. Well, not exactly a book, but a pamphlet maybe: Eight and a half years. But....

"He's a model prisoner and if he stays that way he could be out by mid-2008," Meiwes's lawyer Harald Ermel told reporters. "He will voluntarily undergo psychiatric therapy to get away from his fetish for men's flesh. I'm sure he won't do anything like this again."

"Without the Internet, this would not have been possible." [It's all the fault of the Internet.]

The Agence France-Presse report had more details, including this wonderful bit of double-talk:

Presiding judge Volker Muetze told the packed courtroom that Meiwes, 42, had not committed a murder in the legal sense "but a behavior that is condemned in our society -- namely the killing and butchering of a human being". [Huh?]

At least five other people also saying they were willing to be killed and eaten went to his house in Rotenburg, near Kassel, but either backed down or were rejected as unappealing. [Can you imagine what it did to the self-esteem of these people who weren't good enough to be cannibalized? Do they try again, like Charlie Tuna, until they, too, are good enough for Starkist?]

And then there was the AP version, which had even more interesting detail:

Armin Meiwes, a 42-year-old computer expert, had no "base motives" in the crime, a state court ruled, sparing him a murder conviction. [???]

His primary motive was "the wish to make another man part of himself," Judge Volker Muetze said. [Thanks for clearing that up.]

Before the verdict, Meiwes looked calm, chatting with his attorney and occasionally grinning for cameras allowed inside the courtroom. [The regret is palpable, isn't it?]

"I had my big kick and I don't need to do it again," he said. "I regret it all very much, but I can't undo it." [Don't these two statements contradict each other?]

"If I hadn't been so stupid as to keep looking on the Internet, I would have taken my secret to the grave," Meiwes said in his closing statement. [Finally, we have our regret.]

In short, a trial, and a justice system, and a country that only Oswald Spengler could appreciate.