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logomachy--1. A dispute
about words. 2. A dispute carried on in words only; a battle of words.
logomachon--1. One who argues about words.
2. A word warrior.
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2004-12-26
"Everybody hates Ahmed!"
In the Red Zone (ITRZ) publishes a confidential State Department memo, a proposal to give Iraqis a sitcom to “counter the effects of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia.” The idea is to use alternative media to reduce tensions between Shia and Sunnis.
The set-up for "My Son the Shia," is that Abu Dulaimy, head imam of an ultra-orthodox Wahhabi mosque in Falluja, sends his son Ahmed off to engineering school in Basra. After two years, Ahmed comes back home married to the beautiful, but ditzy Layla. Problem is, Layla is Shia--and Ahmed has converted in order to marry her, driving Abu crazy! In the pilot, “just before Ramadan, Layla hopes to impress her new in-laws by cooking her sure-fire mazgouf recipe,” only she forgets that Sunnis start the holiday before the Shia. “Old Abu and his four wives try to maintain their fast, while trying to keep the city's religious police from dynamiting their house.”
In another side- and head-splitting episode, hilarity ensues again, when Imam Abu tells his Wahhabi congregation that Shiism is a Jewish plot against Islam. His son Ahmed gets so angry that he tells the local American commander about the rocket-propelled grenades hidden under the mosque.
Still another plot has Layla baking again. This time, it’s cookies to celebrate Mohammad's birthday. We are assured that “the scene where she gets chased down the street by an angry mob threatening to stone her to death is a classic!”
Can you imagine] Is this some kind of spoof or satire] What kind of Foggy Bottom numbskull would think twice about such an idea]
Why, that would be like Stars and Stripes during the Vietnam War publishing a cartoon about a goofy American platoon with their fat, hapless sergeant and their winsome opposite numbers in the “Nget Cong” with their own a fat, hapless sergeant. It might have been called “Nguyen Charlie” and looked something like this:E
That was a hell of a way to fight a war, compared with the buck-toothed, bespectacled Nips of WWII, and Donald Duck’s Nazi nightmare in “Der Fuehrer's Face”â. (The artist did some latter day strips involving Swift Boats. See if you can spot the flip-flops on the boat’s lantern-jawed officer in charge.)
So I think that if “Operation Infinite Ratings” can fly under Condi’s radar, it looks good for a mid-season replacement. Plans are to introduce some additional featured characters, and I have this idea for an English language spin-off. I can’t say too much now, but if you can grasp the potential of “The Fresh Thief of Baghdad”, have your girl call my girl and we’ll do lunch.
ãI looked for a download for this cartoon. I found a link on a neo-Nazi site (where people thought it was a riot, except the guy who objected that conditions were not so bad in Hitler’s Germany). The download site (steakandcheese.com) is full of ads for porn, but this link will open the cartoon directly in Windows Media Player.
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