Posted on June 3rd, 2010 by Gavin M.
With mine hammer Mjolnir, I say thee NAY!
Brad Thor, Big Journalism:
Where’s Waldo? Newsweek One Step Behind ‘Big’ Sites on Mullah Omar Story
With mine hammer Mjolnir, I say thee YE-E-ESSS?
On Friday, Newsweek “We Are All Socialists Now” Magazine published an article entitled, “Taliban in Turmoil.”
It seemed unlikely that there’d be any followup to the Mullah Omar story, so crashingly had Mr. Thor fallen from limb to limb in his descent from his treehouse and into our, you know, good cheer.
But we looked and there one was, only a few days old and unlikely to have lost any breaking-news value, wink-ahem. The tone was approaching a harried note characteristic of what was called ‘kook literature‘ before the Internet mainstreamed the kooks, and Thor had apparently given up reporting the story in order to yell at Newsweek in much the way that Lenny Bruce gave up comedy to read excerpts of his court transcripts.
In it they report:
Dissension has broken out in the top ranks of Afghanistan’s Taliban. The group has muddled along without an operational head since February, when Mullah Mohammed Omar’s second in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan… But now a claimant to Baradar’s position has emerged—and at least some senior Taliban chiefs are seriously questioning whether he should have the job.
We reported this a full two weeks ago, but let’s not let that get in the way of our enjoyment of the Newsweek piece.
Yeah, deeply involved in Scientology, all the way through The Brothers Karamazov. I’m listing places we’ll never end up. Uh, the one Thor’s in right up there. On top of Old Smoky or spaghetti all covered in snow or cheese. Walking a mile in some dude we don’t understand’s moccasins.1
The claimant is Mullah Gul Agha Akhund, “an in-law and long term confidant of Mullah Omar’s.” Apparently, senior officials — including Omar’s top military commander, Abdul Qayum Zakir — are skeptical of Gul Agha’s claim to power. What’s more, Gul Agha’s claim is sowing doubt and confusion throughout the Taliban’s ranks.
That can’t be good for the bad guys.
So it’s bad for the good guys! No wait, logic puzzle. It’s bad or indifferent for the good, bad, or indifferent guys?
Well, one thing we’re sure of: If his present course is not misunderstood, Gul Agha is liable in the future to reap doubt and confusion throughout the Taliban’s ranks. Uncorrected, he may soon thresh doubt and confusion.
Anyway, we just understand things more objectively than Thor does, because he looks at this struggle for dominance and projects his own values upon it, while we see speciation at work. See, the Mullahs of the Galapagos showed Darwin how different environments could produce mullahs that, while sharing a fairly recent common ancestor, were biologically adapted…eh. Ok bored, next thing.
Newsweek goes on to say that there is yet another claimant named Mullah Mohammad Mansoor, (another fact we also reported two weeks ago). In my report, I stated that Mansoor and Zakir have actually both been fighting for control. But according to Newsweek, it looks now like we’ve got a three-way
WTF?!
race. The obvious…
Oh.
…question here, though, is why is there any race at all?
That’s what Darwin asked in attempting to settle the great ontogenic debate of his day, the one between the theories of monogenism and polygenism. The first is what…ok bored. Wait, that was different from the Darwin thing how?
Cripes. We ought to get that large white rabbit in here with his bowl and milk pitcher, and with his dubiously honest plate of buttered toast and glass of orange juice for a complete breakfast, because he’s probably out like usual, chasing kids around and trying to steal from them — and as we see above, this post is just so totally full of tricks that we should get that rabbit in here to eat some like he always wants to.
Shouldn’t Mullah Omar be handling this?
That’s what I say in the shower sometimes. But then I think of his squinty eye and imagine him going “toot-toot” and popping open a can of spinach in each of his bare hands, then pouring the contents in implausible green arcs into a combined stream down his gullet, chomping with spinach leaves coming out the corners of his mouth, and making a big bicep so that his tattoo of a boat turns into one of a battleship with booming guns, while a steam whistle emits from his pipe. I think of him going “Ag-ag-ag-ag,” and I’m sorry, but this reminds me of Popeye, who also had a squinty eye like that.
Where was I? Oh, here’s that rabbit. Yeah, it’s gotten out of control. Fill this bucket full of milk and take this Army surplus entrenching tool, and I guess we’ll come and check after awhile to make sure you’re still, you know, silly, and to see how that plate of toast and glass of orange juice are holding up.
Shouldn’t Omar speak out, quash the “turmoil,” and settle all of this? One of these guys is his “in-law and long-term confidant” after all.
Wait, as in gay? As in ‘rear admiral,’ if you know what I’m saying,2 and I just said ‘gay’ two seconds ago, so I think that you do? ‘In-law’ is code for their being husbands in the eyes of the law, I think, like ‘homeowner’ is code for owning a house and using it as a kind of gay headquarters.
Hmmmmmmm, I wonder why no one has heard even a peep out of Omar.
He could put a glass eye in and squeak it around. I’m sorry, what was the question?
If you’ve been following my writing, you already know the answer, but I’ll let the ace reporters at Newsweek nibble around the edges and hint at what we’ve been reporting here for the last three weeks.
Oh. Serious for a second here. He’s complaining that Newsweek doesn’t say that Mullah Omar has been captured, when the Newsweek piece is about a three-way of Number Twos. I actually just typed that without realizing it would make me spray coffee on the cat, whose expression said he wasn’t expecting to skid off the table with paws air-galloping to land with an unseen whump on the other cat, who propelled herself into the side of the couch, scrabbled for purchase with her claws, and slid out of view, looking also like she hadn’t anticipated this sequence of events.
What happened to this post? It started with such reasonable intentions, and is now concluding with an eep-wow sound like the Little Rascals wah cake.
Three Taliban sources tell NEWSWEEK they wish Mullah Omar would speak up and settle the leadership question before matters get any worse; with 30,000 U.S. reinforcements arriving on the battlefield, the Taliban desperately need a unified strategy… “No one really knows who is in charge.”
And the reason no one in the Taliban knows who’s in charge is because, as we exclusively reported on May 10th, Mullah Omar has been in Pakistani custody since March.
Or it might be, as we exclusively looked up at Wikipedia, that Omar has long been holed up securely, might have enjoyed the protection of Pakistani intelligence since 2007, and only makes one or two public statements a year, with the number of dispatches and private communiqués totaling duh — as in the number, duh, whose value is defined as whatever you think it is, plus or minus maybe some numbers to correct for things. But sure, it could be like Thor sayeth, or spaketh.
That information is 100% rock-solid and you can take it to the bank.
THOR: Hi, I’d like to make a deposit. It’s 100% rock-solid.
CLERK: It’s not money. Is it a rock?
THOR: A rock is… Yes, it’s 100% solid like one, yes.
CLERK: Look, sir, you can take it to the bank. You can certainly take it here. But when a rock…
THOR: It’s information, not a rock. Very, very hard and certain information from rumors.
SUPERVISOR: Say, what’s the problem over here? Is this guy peddling more of his rocks, sticks, and pine cones?
THOR: Hard, hard information. Pitiless, hard information wrapped in foil. [unwraps foil]
CLERK: OMG poo, I mean excrement.
SUPERVISOR: Fine, sir, you took it to the bank. Now take it to the exit of the bank, and take it a step further.
THOR: I’ll have you know that this deposit is 100% rock solid.
SUPERVISOR: If mine turned 25% rock solid, I’d have a fiber bar or something, jeesh. Hey, I’m just saying.
Notes:
Title cf. ‘Banana Boat Song,’ and I think I used the title once before, but hey. “With mine hammer Mjolnir, I say thee NAY-O!”
1 There was an anecdote I’d reserved for just such an occasion as the one marked by the superscript ‘1’ up there, but damned if I can remember what that anecdote or occasion might have been. To offer up a random footnote, I’m mildly obsessed with The Housatonic at Stockbridge by Charles Ives: the pentatonic up front doing ironico-affectionate Americanisms, with that sheet-curtain of dissonance behind it…
2 Also cf.
