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MOURNFUL HUMOR By Manuel E. Yepe Since it arrived out of the blue, I came within an inch of tossing the outdated copy on top of the pile of old newspapers we use at home to wrap up garbage. However, I decided to take a quick glance through it first just in case there was something my friend in the U.S. wanted me to read. That is when I noticed that it was just an apocryphal edition of The New York Times aimed at making fun of the hopes that Barack Osama’s election as President had raised across the nation. Everything from the usual news, reports, comments and ads to the regular sections used the New York Times’ ordinary format and style. The exceptional 14-page paper proclaims “Iraq War Ends” in large type, with a subhead declaring “Troops to return Immediately”, with Washington announcing that “Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom were brought to an unceremonious close today with a quiet announcement by the Department of Defense that the troops would be home within weeks”. Another front-page report points out that ex-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had apologized to the whole world for the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) scare and reassured a group of wounded soldiers that the Bush Administration had known well before the invasion that Saddam Hussein had no such weapons, or otherwise the U.S. never would have sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to Iraq. Some of the other bylines include articles such as “Nation sets its sights on building a sane economy” with an omnibus economic package that includes mandatory true cost accounting, a federal maximum wage long searched-for by labor unions and progressive activist groups, and other measures intended to improve life for ordinary Americans. There was also a report about how recent demonstrations in front of the White House had made the U.S. government sensitive to the need to close the torture center at the Guantanamo Naval Base. The international section of this imaginary NYT issue blazons reports that all 192 UN member states passed a general, worldwide weapons ban and the positive impact such a watershed event would have on other conflict zones on the planet where the involved countries have felt encouraged to resolve their differences in a peaceful way. There is an item about the groundbreaking of two monuments to the last to die during the occupation of Iraq. It pointed out that because of the lack of proportion in the number of casualties between both countries (1,233,657 Iraqis –mostly civilian– to 4,314 Americans) there will be a huge difference in size between the two monuments. Likewise, it is reported that ex-President George W. Bush has been indicted on charges of high treason, to which he has pleaded guilty, as part of a strategy to get away with a triple life sentence and to move the case to an international court that does not have a death penalty. The fake publication also assures readers that, according to a poll conducted by the NYT, and CBS, 65% of the people favor a life sentence for George W. Bush, whereas 31% prefer the death penalty, and 3% would be satified with a lesser punishment. Only 2% would drop charges. As usual in the case of the New York Times and any other big publication of any political bent that controls real power, this imaginary edition also has fake ads of all sizes, except that in this case, and in tune with the parody, both the gigantic corporations and the smaller organizations are portrayed congratulating each other, euphoric over the end of conflict and the advent of a world of peace and progress for all people. Behind the funny satire is the dramatic frustration all Americans feel today, held captive as they are by the empire’s dehumanized interests, which humiliate their nation through the ruthless manipulation of the American people’s democratic values and traditions. January 2010 |