Would You Wear A Kaffiyeh With That?
Spencer Ackerman steals another great idea of mine:
And the U.S. thinks it can outplay this guy on his own turf? Could Dick Cheney have survived Saddam Hussein’s goons? Moqtada Sadr is the new Che Guevara. Bring on the t-shirts for every sophomoric lefty college student.
I have no proof to back this claim up, but I’m pretty sure that my brother and I thought up the idea of putting Moqtada on t-shirts n late 2005 or so. We also though that the “Mahdi Army” sounded like a great name for a rap crew. One problem though: Moqtada, despite being a certified anti-American badass (I’m not saying that what he does is good, just that he’s one bad SOB, as evidenced by Patrick Cockburn’s book), doesn’t really look that cool on a shirt. He kinda looks like a very chubby, very angry baby. But he could still be adopted by rappers. There’s very solid precedent for terroristic, anti-American figures being seen as badasses by rappers. In 2Pac’s hatikva-sampling some Jewish-liturgical-music-I-can’t-identify sampling classic “Troublesome 96″, he name checks a series of murderous, anti-American world leaders including Qadaffi, Castro, Idi Amin, Mussolini, “Hussein Fatal” and “my nigga Napoleon.” So who wants to join my crew, Ayatollah MZ and the Mahdi Army?
