Blog on the Lillypad
Friday, September 12, 2003
 | Aftermath
Would I ever hear a plane overhead without feeling a twinge? Would I ever look at a clear blue September sky and greet it with exhilaration instead of bittersweet longing? I shared the aftermath with my country. And yet, the nature of what it is to be an American still surprised me. First, (by Saturday the 15th) people started wishing that we could find something funny about all of it. And that alone surprised me. Only Americans would do that. We treasure comedy. And second, we started finding funny things. |
The Onion's interview with God about not killing was so vulgar it tipped too far towards blasphemy, but I read it. And while I didn't laugh at the humor, I saw the humor. And then, of course, there was Evil Bert the PhotoShop goof that reminded us that while Al Qaedda is blood thirsty, sneaky, filled with hate, and determined to kill all Americans simply because we are Americans, they are also clueless. Let me spell that correctly, CLUELESS. The Bert is Evil web page has been pulled off the web as far as I know, and I respect the author for pulling it to preserve Bert's image with children. But it was funny. My favorite shot was of Bert riding around with Hitler and giving him advice.
 | Then there was the Taliban itself. I don't recall anybody making fun of them at first because their actions were so horrific. But the way they would get up and lie and lie and lie to camera men and news reporters in the face of overwhelming truth about everything they lied about (and they lied about everything), was comical. I realized that those guys would lie even if the truth would serve them better. It was horrifying to see clips of them shooting women in the head and committing other
atrocities, and the sight of the heavily veiled women begging for food because they were not allowed to work angered me. We should have fought the Taliban long ago, or at least challenged them for their incredible oppression of women and the poor. But there are times when you wish that a modern day version of the Three Stooges would step forward and do a parody of these guys as the originals did with Hitler and Mussolini. |
| And then, one morning in early October, when as usual I got up and went right to my computer to get the latest news, I got an e-mail from sister. She sent me a URL and told me to check this site, as it was one of the funniest things she had ever seen. By now I think everybody has seen this, but if not, click here (sound file, so be careful if your at work. When I first saw it, I watched it four or five times and then sent the link on to everybody else that I knew. I kept playing it again and again at work.
Eventually, one of the news stations included a brief clip of it on their hourly sign-off. Life was not back to normal. Life would never go back to being the normal that we'd once had. But, at least for the moment, we were coping. |  |
 | http://www.gotlaughs.com/funpages/bin2.swf |
