Nothing should shock us in an era when cable television serves up tasteless parodies of school shootings and stand-up comics use the unsolved murder of a young Denver girl as the punch line to beauty pageant jokes.
Buyers beware, though.
Two million women are beaten by their husbands or boyfriends every year and 1,500 of them die, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Salem, a man was arrested after a stabbing that left his girlfriend dead and her young daughter injured. In Florida, a Michigan state senator was arrested and charged with beating his fiancee in the head. In Houston, a man was charged with beating, stabbing, and binding his girlfriend with wire before dousing her with gasoline and setting her on fire. In San Antonio, dozens of people gathered at a local church for a prayer vigil in memory of a woman and the police officer who tried to save her from an abusive marriage.