"can schadenfreude kill?"

Speaking of pervert Congressmen, I ran across a blog comment by someone claiming that he had it on good authority that a long-serving-&-well-known-but-closeted US senator would be outed sometime this summer. (Sorry, not interested in legal action. To quote Firesign Theatre, "if it's stories you want, make them up yourself!")

The comment went something like:

"A good friend has a good friend who fingered Larry Craig for the Stall of Fame six months before he was arrested tells me that.."

Take it for what it's worth: no more than gossip. This particular senator has been the subject of closeted-gay rumors for some time, but of course that doesn't make the rumor true.

But I'd like to think that it is, because this is another senator who's been particularly unsympathetic to gays. In which case, as John Cole asked a while back, "Can schadenfreude kill?" :-)

One of my clown buds sent me this comment:

> I saw a tshirt in washington sq park the other day:
> schadenfreude - the 8th deadly sin

He attended a vocational school too. The same vocational school, in fact, but hey, two clowns, same school, who's counting? And where's the outrage?

Oh, wait, that's Bill Bennett.. different clown. Outrageous.

A personal experience: a few years ago at a circus-alumni get-together, I had an exchange with a German ex-colleague.. you thought the classic German uber-professor manner was apocryphal? Think again..

I forget the context - probably about English words that made their way into German - but at some point in the discussion he turned to me and said with a sh*t-eating I've got you nailed grin, "but Fermion, we have in German a word for which English has no equivalent..

I politely inquired as to what that word might be.

"Schadenfreude".. "It means 'taking joy in someone else's sorrow'.

So I grinned back and said, "Ah, but you're wrong! We do have a word for that concept!"

He looked puzzled. "And what is the word?"

"Schadenfreude."

I'm sure the moment didn't last as long as I remember it lasting, but I seem to recall that for about 15 seconds he looked like he'd been hit over the head with a 2x4..