When they sent us here, they sent us with a mission. Dick Cheney said: "Make those savages laugh." Well by Allah we tried.
They embedded us in the U.S. Army's 1st Comedy Dragoons, the oldest and the most comic regiment in the army. During the Civil War it saw action at Harper's Laugh-Off, the largest comedy open-mic showdown between the North and South. Some said slavery couldn't be made funny, but they underestimated the creativity of a rag-tag group of brave slapstick boys, The Three Minstrel-teers.
Today, in Iraq, our brave boys drive M3 Bradley CFVs and M1A1 Abrams tanks full of comedy straight into the hearts and minds of the enemy/local populace. Three years ago it was Carrot Top, howling from a megaphone while jumping up and down on a 120 degree sun-baked turret, his face glowing in the heat even more than his hair.
The Iraqis didn't find it funny.
Then they escorted in Robin Williams, whose free association stream of consciousness riff on the peculiarities of Arab culture did not strike a chord. Weeks later Woody Allen's neurotic hypochondria had become oddly appropriate and unfunny, given his age and the local mortality rate. It's just hard to raid someone's home in the middle of the night, line them up in front of Woody Allen, and expect them to be a receptive audience.
Then they sent in OU for a final surge.
We tried, we really tried. We did a lot of funny shit in a lot of funny places. We told Michael Jackson jokes to entire Mosques. We held up pictures of Paris Hilton's crotch to quaintly modest Iraqi women. Our fly-girls showed their tits all over Baghdad and passed out jello shots. Our jackass team lit their balls on fire and ran screaming down the streets of Ramadi. Nothing worked.
What about the OU website? We blogged our asses off. But when they're not getting indiscriminately killed by bombs or at checkpoints, Iraqis seem to spend more time trying to survive than checking their newsreader during the daily 10 minutes of electricity for the latest OU post. We suspect many of them do not even surf the Web, much less visit our site.
I sit here absorbing the sites and sounds of Iraq for the last time. The local culture. The call for prayer. The smell of freshly brewed coffee with hints of filet o' fish, and the feel of a plastic bench against my ass (I'm writing from a MacDonald's in the Green Zone). What can I say, except that it's with great sadness that we — the OU team–are leaving Iraq.
It's a sad day. We came to teach them about democracy and the zany potential of the internet and the healing power of laughter. What can we say–I guess you can't change a culture at the end of a gun, or even a pen. Sorry Dick Cheney, and sorry G.W. — we tried and failed. Sorry, Iraq. And thanks for the memories — including this precious last memory, my delicious McKebab.
Again, thanks. It's been real. It's been funny. It's been real funny.
Just not funny enough.
Written by Dignan
