DOD photo / <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_soldiers_stuck_in_sand_in_southern_Afghanistan.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a>
Welcome, insecure reader: Today is our special Labor Day edition! As you plan your leisure activities for the long weekend, MoJo offers you a host of national-security-related entertainment options: watching Iraq’s hottest suicide-bombing-comedy TV show; playing Muslim dress-up in New York with Israeli spies; viewing the movie and playing the video game that the military doesn’t want you to see; speaking truth to power, only seven years too late; checking out the latest in militarized femme Christian emo rock; and harshly judging the dancing boys of Afghanistan.
The sitrep:
The United States government’s national threat level is Elevated, or Yellow. You’re welcome.
- What do you get when you cross MTV’s Punk’d with Hurt Locker? You get the latest sign Iraq is becoming normal—like, America normal—a thriving celeb-reality TV industry! To wit: the new show, Put Him in Camp Bucca, on Iraq’s Al-Baghdadiya TV station, which frames up celebs for carrying car bombs, then secretly tapes the hilarity as they try to talk themselves out of incarceration at the new Abu Ghraib. Says a recent celebrity guest: “I am a family man. I have two kids. How could I do this to my family? I am telling you the truth, it’s not me who planted the bomb.” Ha ha ha ha, crazy. It’s cool, though, we’re doing the same thing. Just, like, not funny or anything.
- Israeli Mossad spies of Arab descent, who are in the US posing as UN diplomats, also pose as American intelligence officers of Arab descent in order to convince Muslim Americans, mostly of Arab descent, to cooperate with them in rooting out domestic Hamas sympathizers, since (obviously!) the Muslim Americans will be much more helpful to US spooks than Israeli ones. Shockingly, this “inverted false flag” operation isn’t going so well. Simplify, Maccabean operatives. Simplify.
- Perhaps you’d like to watch that documentary on how the Army cooked up a phony story about Pat Tillman’s killing. Hopefully, you weren’t a service member who was planning to see it at the base theater. Also, if you’re a Yalie and a Democrat, maybe you don’t want to watch it either. You see, the flick is kind of hard on one General Stan McChrystal (yes, that McChrystal), who played a big part in the Tillman mythmaking. Stan’s teaching at Yale now, (on navigating politics and the media, hee hee), and the College Dems have pulled their support for a campus viewing of The Tillman Story because “the Yale College Democrats do not attack war heroes.” Wow: Even when they’re being jingoistic, political flacks manage to sound like cowards.
- Devastating documentaries aside, the Army and Air Force Exchange System of on-base entertainment and shopping has had a really busy week of banning shit. Like this video game that lets you be an Afghan jihadi shooting at Uncle Sam’s own trigger-pullers. We’re calling this move a Talibanban.
- Yeah! Way to ell ’em, AP! You refuse to be snowed about the ongoing war in Iraq, ever since you praised Dubya’s precision flying skills and uncritically reported “Mission Accomplished” seven years ago!
- We’re not the only warlike society that needs idle pursuits. Have you heard about Afghanistan’s bacha bazi? Andrew Sullivan’s staff just did, though it’s been making the rounds for a while. Consider curling up to watch this curdling Frontline on the matter.
- Do you like Christian girl rock bands? Are you a service member? Six words: “Pristine weaponized gospel of Jesus Christ.” Yeehaw!
