Opinion: Bearded bride baffles Baghdad
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A few years back I was working on a story about gay asylum that never came to anything, partly because I couldn’t get any documentation for the juiciest bits I was hearing about — tall tales of immigration bed checks, pamphlets circulating in the ‘community’ that instructed asylum seekers about how to femme up their performances for credulous ICE and CIS agents, and so on. But the bigger problem was that what the story really wanted to be was not a trend piece but a sitcom: A pair of Saudi terrorists pose as a committed couple to get into the United States and blow up the Golden Gate Bridge. They settle in the Castro; a series of ludicrous mishaps keeps thwarting their terror scheme; Andy Dick shows up as a wacky neighbor; Kathy Najima puts in an electrifying performance as the anti-heroes’ flamboyant ‘gal pal;’ the two earn the enmity of a fire-breathing, gay-hating local Imam; and so on. In short, wackiness ensues.
Art, life, imitation, etc. CNN reports on how a group of alert soldiers manning a checkpoint near the Iraqi capital foiled the Cary Grant/Ann Sheridan routine of a group of insurgents:
Upon inspecting the convoy, soldiers found a stubbly-faced man, Haider al-Bahadli, decked out in a white bride’s dress and veil. Bahadli was wanted on terror-related charges, as was his groom, Abbas al-Dobbi, the official said.
Are we getting punked by CNN? The photos of the ill-shaven Bahadli (credited to the Iraq Defense Ministry) are ludicrous enough to make you think so. Why didn’t he shave? What kind of lazy terrorist would put up such a halfhearted effort? I’m no expert on terrorism, but I know one thing: Men are always finding plenty of pressing, important reasons why they really need to wear women’s clothes, and that’s because men want to wear women’s clothes. Even in Iraq, where the fashion options are so much narrower, and the opportunities for two men to follow their bliss are so few.
Courtesy of Radley Balko.