This one's for Horde King, from the Onion. Don't know if you've seen it, HK, but when I read it, I got a good laugh out of it and thought of you.
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CRAZED PALESTINIAN GUNMAN ANGERED BY STEREOTYPES
HEBRON, WEST BANK-In an emotionally charged press conference Monday, crazed Palestinian gunman Faisal al Hamad expressed frustration over the stereotyping of his people.
"As a crazed Palestinian gunman, I feel hurt by the negative portrayal of my people in the media," said al Hamad, 31, a Hebron-area terrorist maniac. "None of us should have to live with stereotyping and ignorance."
He then began screaming and firing into a busload of Israeli schoolchildren.
"It hurts that in this supposedly enlightened day and age, people still make assumptions about other people," al Hamad said. "We should not rely on simple generalizations. Each crazed Palestinian gunman is an individual."
Al Hamad said that he himself has often been unfairly stereotyped. "Any time I enter a crowded temple with fully loaded AK-47s in both hands, people just assume I'm going to open fire," he said. "That really hurts."
"Yes, I sometimes do gun people down in the name of the One True God," he noted. "But there is so much more to me."
Several weeks ago, al Hamad was again the victim of stereotyping during a vacation he took with his family to Washington, D.C.
"When we arrived at the airport in Washington, security guards detained us for more than 12 hours, just because I had 140 pounds of plastic explosives strapped to my chest," al Hamad said. "Do you think they would have called the FBI if I weren't a crazed Palestinian who's on their Ten Most Wanted List? I don't think so."
Al Hamad said his vacation was ruined when federal agents seized a crate of chemical weapons he had brought into the U.S. as a gift for a friend in New York.
"I explained to them that the weapons were a birthday present for the blind cleric Sayid al Farouq, a good friend of mine from high school," he said. "But they did not believe me and took me into federal custody for nine weeks. Again, it's a case of people jumping to conclusions on the basis of skin color. And that can be very frustrating."
According to al Hamad, stereotypes against crazed Palestinian gunmen don't work because they don't take into account the vast variety of proud histories and diverse cultures among them.
"There are so many different kinds of crazed Palestinian gunmen. Each of us has our own unique reasons and motivations for our bus bombings and suicide missions," he said. "No two fundamentalist agendas are alike."
Al Hamad also stressed the importance of understanding and celebrating the cultural differences between crazed Palestinian gunmen and non-crazed, non-Palestinian non-gunmen.
"All the different peoples of the world have something special to offer each other," he said. "Our diversity is our greatest strength. Let's not make a weakness out of that strength."
To emphasize his point, al Hamad fired into a crowd, killing nine.
"I'm proud to be a crazed Palestinian gunman, obviously," he said in between shouts of anti-imperialist slogans. "But I'm an individual first. I'm me. Die, Yankee infidel pig swine!"
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WWFallon - a sig-pic-making jar of Human Clay
"Being a bastard WORKS."
--Spider Jerusalem