Lists of Osama jokes had a long, if moderate, period of peak popularity, beginning about a week after their emergence and extending from October 11 to October 20,³⁵ although such lists continued to be posted on message boards at the rate of about once every three days through the end of the year. The popularity of cybercartoons is harder to gauge due to the difficulty of dating their circulation, but both Joseph Goodwin and I received the bulk of our examples during the period between October 9 and October 24, suggesting that these forms of humor also peaked at this time. Thus this cycle, unlike the earlier disaster-focused one, did meet with some success, circulating by e-mail and being posted on websites as well. This is a predictable result, since as we have seen, John Dorst has argued that the cyclical dissemination of jokes is modeled on the prevailing economic and political order. Since the jokes are founded on politically dominant images of the military as all-powerful and the Other as primitive, dirty, and ignorant, we could expect such joke cycles to appear and mark a resurgent confidence in the dominant structures of this country.

Yet even though jokes in this vein elicited laughter during this period, they did not appeal to all audiences and in fact made some witnesses profoundly uncomfortable, not because they were seen as inappropriate, but because their implicit political message was not accepted by all. Of the "new" one-liner jokes, the cleverest and most successful was this one: "You know what Osama Bin Laden is going to be for Halloween?....A DEAD GUY!!!!" This joke circulated orally as early as the first week of October, attributed to television humorist Jay Leno (Hider 2001: October 3, 2001 10:51 PM). It gained even more popularity when it was told by the pro-military Republican Senator John McCain on the nationally broadcast Letterman Show on the evening of October 18. It plays on the traditional use of Halloween to impersonate common fears, and a common costume would be that of a corpse. The joke combines the ominous nature of this festival of death with the key idea of the earlier joke, "What's the difference between Osama and Christmas," in addition playing cleverly on the double meaning of "going to be." Thus the threat of the terrorist leader appearing (like Poe's masquer of the Red Death) in the guise of what everyone fears most is immediately defused with the secondary meaning: "by Halloween, Osama will be dead."

Female audiences were particularly uncomfortable with these kinds of jokes, as illustrated by one thoughtful reaction to this joke documented in a Canadian woman's online journal:

Signs of a restless mind: I'm dithering between what I'd call "intolerant propaganda" and mean-but-harmless amusement. Case in point: the Letterman show last night. Senator John McCain was the marquee guest. His first words were "What's Osama Bin Laden going to be for Halloween? Dead!" Huge laffs from audience. Throughout McCain's interview, Afghanis were referred to as camel-sellers and camel-herders. "Get back to your camel sheds," etc., again to huge guffaws from the audience each time.

I know the US has focused on the Taliban government and militia as the enemy, with very good reason. I personally feel the Taliban's combination of fundamentalism and hatred is evil in our time. But would I have quietly sat through an interview where someone said about, say, hostile African forces, "get back to your banana trees" or "get back to your cannibal pots"? I doubt it. I don't know exactly why, but it made me feel very uncomfortable, the way I get when someone's being bigoted or otherwise intolerant in a mixed group of people of which I'm part. . . .

I guess maybe I do know why the Letterman show bothered me. A comic depiction of an unfamiliar culture (Afghanis as camel-loving madmen) is just another way of objectifying them. And objectifying them muddies the definition of them as human beings -- granted, human beings capable of terrible things. Yet once they're seen as less than human, it's easier to visit atrocities on them under the justification of "revenge." Which, if you've been paying attention, is exactly what the terrorists did to our society on September 11th. . . . I hope, oh, I hope, we don't sink to that level. We have to be better than the terrorists, and treat them better than we expect in return, or what's it all for? How can we say we're better?

(Farries: October 19, 2001 3:33 PM)

Thus it is revealing that, as popular as the "Osama Jokes" were, they were not as popular as the Second Wave jokes that implied quite a different reaction to the 9/11 tragedy. An early example of such a joke originated in a political cartoon by John Deering of the [Little Rock] Arkansas Democrat Gazette:

The cartoon³⁶ originally appeared September 20, but as with many items it began circulating actively a week later in a wide range of settings: photocopy and electronic form, as well as paraphrased oral form. Message boards record the widening use of this cartoon during the start of the Second Wave. At Lincoln Center in New York City, another observer saw two items posted on a bulletin board near the principal artists' dressing room. One was an inspirational quote by the late conductor Leonard Bernstein, but the other was Deering's cartoon (Schubin 2001: September 29). And on the same day the Washington Post reprinted this piece, possibly in response to its growing popularity in Internet conduits. One observer called it "a truly lovely editorial cartoon. . . . Oddly enough, this may be the truest thing I've seen in print in weeks" (alt.gothic: September 29, 2001 08:43:46 PST). More interestingly, on September 27, a participant in alt.support.stop smoking observed a home-made sign posted on an office door:

TO THE TALIBAN--
HAND OVER BIN LADEN,
OR WE'LL SEND YOUR WOMEN TO COLLEGE!

September 27, 2001 09:44:09 PST

The sign paraphrases Deering's original caption rather than quoting it, indicating that the joke had already passed into oral circulation. In oral form, the punch line took a variety of forms: Simon Bronner, for instance, collected it as, "To the Taliban from the American people: / Give us Bin Laden, or we will take all of your women and send them to college" (e-mail, September 30, 2001).

While not strictly traditional in origin, the emergence of "Ultimatum to the Taliban" as a frequently-forwarded cartoon signaled a shift in American WTC humor. The target and strategy of its humor contrasts sharply with the abortive "gross" cycle and with hyperpatriotic items like "George W. Bush's Speech" and "Osama at Halloween." Most notably, it does not promise a firestorm to equal the Trade Center's demise, but instead shifts the focus to the Afghani government's policy of depriving women civil rights. The joke could be taken two ways. One could see, ironically, a visit by a group of college-educated woman as a social threat comparable to that of a nuclear attack, so the joke threatens to visit on the Taliban what American males have had to endure for years.³⁷ But the messages commenting on this cartoon clearly show a more humane interpretation: that the freedom of women in this country represents a strength comparable to traditional male-focused military weaponry.

Certainly this implication was highlighted in a traditional joke that appeared and circulated at exactly the same time. It was, like some other items, a parody of a previous frequently-forwarded message, often called "Light-a-Candle Friday," which encouraged Americans to show solidarity by lighting a candle outside at some set time. Such a message had circulated in the immediate wake of the attacks:.

Friday Night at 7:00 p.m. EST step out your door, stop your car, or step out of your establishment and light a candle. We will show the world that Americans are strong and united together against terrorism. Please pass this to everyone on your e-mail list. We need to reach everyone across the United States quickly.

e-mail, Thu, 13 Sep 2001 09:44:07 -0400

In fact, a nationwide vigil was held at 7 PM on Friday, September 14, and one element involved communal lighting of candles. But because this specific date was not included in messages like the above, it continued to circulate during the following weeks, often with the added information that NASA planned to photograph the light of the candles from outer space.³⁸

In due time, "Light-a-Candle Friday" was adapted as a parody, which I'll call "Naked Women Friday," in which American females were encouraged to shed their clothes and run around outside, supposedly to deter terrorism. One might think that this, like previous jokes, would circulate in male-dominated conduits, but in fact the item appears to have appealed to women as well as to men. One of the first message boards on which this appeared was rec.arts.marching.drumcorps, under the heading "Re: American Women Unite!" This was posted by a participant named Catherine, forwarded to her on e-mail by her friend Nancy, who in turn credited her sister Shirley. She prefaced the piece by saying, " If you got the E-mail about everyone going out and lighting a candle at the same time, you ought to find this kind of funny. Just a little humor...thought you might enjoy this one!"

American Women Unite-it's for a good cause.

The President has asked that we unite for a common cause. Since the hard line Islamic people can not stand nudity, and consider it a sin to see a naked woman that is not their wife, tonight at 7:00, all women should run out of their house naked to help weed out the terrorists. The United States appreciates your efforts, and applaudes you.
God bless America.

[several lines left blank here]

(you may use Hawaii time)³⁹

rec.arts.marching.drumcorps: September 27, 2001 18:53:00 PST

Catherine, the forwarder, added to the message, "Good Grrrl!⁴⁰ KEEP ON TRUCKIN' !! " This item soon became a popular item on the Internet and soon after appeared in a number of slightly altered forms, one of which added a version of Deering's "Ultimatum to the Taliban" to the message:

Demand to the Taliban:
Stop the nonsense immediately, or we'll send all your women to college!!

The President has asked that we unite for a common cause.
Since the hard line Muslim Terrorists⁴¹ cannot stand nudity, and consider it a sin to see a naked woman that is not their wife, tonight at 7:00 PM and thereafter everyday at noon, all women should run out of their houses and places of work NAKED to help weed out the terrorists.
The United States appreciates your efforts, and applauds you.
Pass on to all your girlfriends! It's an order.

alt.alien.vampire.flonk.flonk.flonk: September 28, 2001 14:10:19 PST

The emergence of this parody at the end of September and the beginning of October, clearly marks the beginning of a more general Second Wave of American humor that did not build on the militaristic, revenge-oriented humor of the first wave. Rather, it seems to have marked the first stages in a return to normalcy, indicating that the mere presence of liberated women, sans clothing, sans weapons, would be enough to deter further acts of terrorism. It was relatively short-lived, possibly mimicking the intense but short-lived emergence of the contemporary legends it parodies ("Alligators in the Potty," another legend parody to be discussed later, also had a relatively brief lifespan.) Still, its popularity suggests (as one of my students commented of this joke) that the emotional armor worn by Americans in the immediate wake of the attacks was increasingly unnecessary and even ridiculous, and that both males and female could begin casting it off, both at work and at home.⁴²

Certainly this move away from a militaristic atmosphere affected the progress of the joke that was perhaps the most widely circulated during this second wave, which I will call "Osama's Sex Change." The core idea emerged, like "Ultimatum to the Taliban," during the First American Wave and likewise did not become popular until some weeks later. In fact, the first form appeared in a hyperpatriotic atmosphere similar to "George W. Bush's Speech," as part of a lengthy, politically incorrect message cross-posted on alt.politics.nationalism.white, and alt.niggers. It began:

Once Osama bin Laden has been captured and tried, some judge or jury will eventually have to decide on an appropriate form of punishment for the cowardly supercrimes which he has committed. It should be obvious that all existing forms of capital punishment are far too lame and humane to ever possibly fit the crime. . . . Here are a few appropriate methods of slow punishment which I have thought of that might be more appropriate than modern day methods of execution. See how many more you can add to this list.

Some of the suggestions involved literal forms of torture, such as "Feed[ing] his body slowly into a jet engine.⁴³... or a wood chipper," while others, like "Paint[ing] him white and put[ting] him in a cage full of niggers" patently appealed to the racist sentiments of this narrow conduit. Demonizing bin Laden, from this point of view, was no less wrong than demonizing Others in this country, as the Canadian online journal quoted earlier suggests. However, it was the following suggestion that seems to have entered a shadowy oral/virtual tradition to emerge later:

Give him a sex change operation (without anesthesia) then put his body on public display in the streets of Kabul... it is said that over there, women have no status at all and that the Taliban has been rounding up all the widows and dumping them alive into mass graves. Perhaps the Taliban would oblige everyone and do the same to Osama bin Laden turned into a female.

September 17, 2001 21:21:07 PST

This suggestion thus combined the two elements seen in visual humor of this First Wave: pedicating bin Laden (and so effeminizing him) and seeing him dead. Alan Dundes, commenting on rituals in which the loser in a feud is emasculated, then killed, comments, "it is evidently not enough, symbolically speaking, merely to kill an enemy . . . [and] the defeated individual is not just emasculated he is specifically feminized" (1997: 35; italics are his). Thus this suggestion fits into a broad range of masculine aggressive behavior documented by Dundes, in which the ultimate revenge involves (literally or symbolically), castrating one's enemy, turning him into a woman, and then killing him/her.

But as the suggestion developed on other message boards, people began to see that there were more fitting forms of revenge than simply killing him in increasingly technologized ways. A week later, a message on alt.security.terrorism said, "We should not kill bin Laden, he should be taken alive-- take him into custody and give him a forced sex change operation, with hormone shots, and force him to live his life out in prison as a woman" (September 24, 2001 14:44:08 PST). Hence, effeminizing Osama could be considered revenge enough, without resorting to military technology such as nuclear warfare. This idea immediately produced a series of enthusiastic responses from others who found it positively diabolical:

1. wow....very creative !! :)

September 24, 2001 15:12:08 PST

2. There's a lot of hate in you boys. Keep up the good work.

September 24, 2001 17:06:00 PST

3M. Satan feels like he died and went to heaven.

September 24, 2001 17:43:01 PST

Gestated further in private conduits over yet another week, "Osama's Sex Change" emerged again at the beginning of October, now in a new context that presents it as the "perfect" revenge:

I have pondered long, over just what would be the best "Ultimate Revenge",...the most perfect punishment for Osama Bin Laden, once he has been found and captured alive? Should we kill him??? Nay, for then he merely becomes a martyr and a hero to the extremists. What we should do is to capture him alive, and then folks, after he has been convicted of all of his crimes, he should be sentence [sic] to this most perfect punishment. And what punishment is that, you ask? Why give that 'expletive deleted' a full blown sex change of course! Then send him back to Afghanistan, and force him to live out the rest of his sorry-aced [sic] life as a woman under the Taliban government, ... Whadda-y'all think about my idea, huh???

miami.general: October 01, 2001 14:16:06 PST

This version of the "sex change" idea for the first time argues that the hypermilitary response is self-defeating, since it simply answers one act of cruelty with another and invites yet another terrorist attack in a widening circle of violence. The appeal of this suggestion is that it turns bin Laden's own anti-democratic sentiments against him, both effeminizing him and making him live under the rules that Islamic extremists have themselves formulated. This form of the joke was further streamlined and emerged the following day in an explosively popular ecotype that began by challenging even more explicitly the militarism of existing "Osama jokes":

A creative solution. And it's peaceful!
Re: Osama. Killing him will only create a martyr. Holding him prisoner will inspire his comrades to take hostages to demand his release. Offering a huge reward for his capture will only encourage him to give himself up so his cohorts can get the money.

And this version streamlines the suggestion, making the text more suitable for quick reading and forwarding in e-mail form:

The solution?
Let the SAS, Seals or whatever covertly capture him, fly him to an undisclosed hospital and have surgeons quickly perform a complete sex change operation. Then we return 'her' to Afghanistan to live as a woman under the Taliban.

rec.crafts.metalworking: October 03, 2001 12:46:27 PST

This version immediately provoked a series of accolades on the message boards where it appeared:

1M. I like it! Nooooo, I mean I REALLY LIKE IT!!!!
This is the very best suggestion I've heard of, bar none, far and away the best on sooooo many levels. Just how do you to get him to continue the estrogen after he get's back? Ooooops, won't be needed, he won't be allowed to show his face in public, that is if he's not killed just for being a woman.
Yep, I like it..... definately.

October 03, 2001 13:12:11 PST

2M. Best one yet!
Loved it!
Forwarded it to many friends.

October 03, 2001 20:33:28 PST

3M. ROFLMAO [Rolling on the floor laughing my ass off].⁴⁴ havn't laughed so much at one of these `getting boring now` Osama things for a long while

October 04, 2001 02:45:07 PST

continue

Page Notes

35.As rated by the appearance of "Taliban bingo," a regular inclusion in these lists and the easiest joke to search for because of its relative textual stability.

36."Copyright 2001. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the artist."

37.Similarly, a recording circulated as an e-mail attachment later in October threatens to give the Taliban's phone number to a group of telemarketers, plaguing them with a host of nuisance phone calls.

38. This motif was already circulating orally on September 14; in fact, I helped spread it by mentioning it during a noon commemoration rally at my campus at Penn State Hazleton. See "Candle Power" http://www.snopes.com/rumors/candle.htm and "Candlelight Vigil to Be Photographed from Space" http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blvigil.htm for other texts and discussion of this rumor.

39.Hawaii time is five hours earlier than East Coast time and two hours earlier than California time. Thus the joke apparently intended to encourage women to emerge several hours earlier than 7 PM proper when, at this season, deep twilight would have fallen and so a collective display of female anatomy would less effectively deter terrorism than it would during broad daylight hours. However, when it is 7 PM Hawaii time, on the East Coast it is actually five hours later (i.e., midnight). This line was omitted from later variants.

40.A common typographical designation for a liberated woman.

41.Italics are mine and indicate additions unique to this version.

42. A variation of this item re-emerged in November and circulated modestly through Jan.-Mar. 2002: "Consider this simple solution for the prevention of hijackings, which also would get the industry back on it's feet. Since men of Muslim religion are not allowed to look at naked women, we should replace all of our female flight attendants with strippers. Male Muslims would be afraid to get on planes for fear of seeing a naked lady and of course every business man in this country would start flying again in hope of seeing a naked lady. We 'd have no more hijackings and the airline industry would have record sales" (Best NEW Jokes of Nov 26, 2001. Today's New Jokes. Available: )http://www.top-greetings.com/A.py?R=20011126).

43. Cf. the addition in the "bin Laden" version of "George W. Bush's Letter," n. 17 above.

44. The highest accolade that experienced Internet users give to jokes.

Newfolk :: NDiF :: Issue 6 :: Chapter 4 :: Chapter 5 ::
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