News Bites Redux

Here is another entry of my right-wing Onion style fake news entries News Bites to be published in the next issue of Afterword magazine. The politics in this one are at least partially inspired by Mark Steyn's America Alone - a really compelling nationalist rant by the widely syndicated columnist. Here's my latest dollop of thinly masked satire for your enjoyment:

French Preschooler Expelled for Cultural Insensitivity

(Lyon, France)

A six year old Lyon boy was expelled from the public preschool Académie d’Appésement earlier this week for displaying “cultural insensitivity” to his fellow classmates. The incident in question concerned a picture drawn by student Bertrand Lagauche, in Mme Angelique’s cours préparatoire (the equivalent of first grade) class. The assignment requested that students draw and label a picture of themselves and their friends playing a favourite game. When Mme Angelique Lalonde received Bertrand’s assignment she was horrified to find that the two figures playing “le football” were labeled “Moi” and “Muhammed.” It is forbidden in the Muslim faith to produce a visual representation of the Prophet, as the class learned the previous month during a session called “Ooh La La, Allah.” During this French installment of an EU mandated cultural education program to teach school children to respect the customs of their Muslim classmates, teachers and female students were excused from class while classes were taught by local Imams.

Although Lalonde attempted to contain the incident within the usual school disciplinary channels, new EU disclosure policies brought the problem to the children and their parents. Concerned parents organized an animated protest together with local youth groups to raise awareness of the problems in the educations system. The marchers held banners reading “Les enfants son l’avenir” and “La mort à l'entité Sioniste et au Grand Satan.” French officials ensured that the marchers remained undisturbed by Nationalist counter-protestors, diverting their procession after several synagogues along the route burst into flames due to apparently faulty electrical wiring. The protest caught the attention of “l'Association du Parent” who demanded that the child be expelled and reassigned to the Al Saud Madrassa de Reversion, a successful new reform school entirely funded by anonymous private donations. The school board blamed the boy’s parents Phillipe and Marie Lagauche for their son’s disrespectful behaviour, recommending to authorities that they be tried under new EU hate crime laws. The pair awaits trial in the European Court of Justice.

The parents of Bertrand’s closest friend Muhammed al-Assa were visibly shaken by the incident. “The child seemed so pleasant and well behaved – we never dreamed that he was an Islamophobe. We can only blame his parents for repeating the racist, nationalist, anti-immigration rhetoric he probably hears at home on a regular basis. We cannot tolerate this kind of extremism in our schools.”

Iranian President Tries his Hand at Fiction

(Tehran, Iran)

A new fictional novel by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shot to the top of best-seller lists across the Muslim world, and Persian educators are scrambling to secure copies of the new literary core of their grade school curricula. Inspired by If I Did It the controversial first novel of his friend and golfing partner OJ Simpson, Ahmadinejad’s If It Happened explores and expands the genre of Speculative Fiction or Spec-Fic. While the falsely accused former-NFL running back Simpson’s book detailed an alternative reality in which he did in fact murder his ex-wife and her lover, President Ahmadinejad’s novel revisits the myth of the Holocaust. Set in the not too distant future, the fantastic tale explores an alternate version of the traditional version where the young German hero “Adi”, a failed artist, embraces Wahabism and deploys suicide bombers and nuclear warheads to bully decadent infidel European leaders into submission and free the people of Palestine and the world of the Jews once and for all. The author stirred the audience at his book launch/Holocaust denial conference in Dec 2006. Despite his detractors, the critical response has been overwhelmingly favourable. Among some of the notable endorsements, David Duke found it “inspiring” and Ernst Zundel called it “a real page turner.” Even Jewish readers are embracing the book as Rabbi Yankel Boged of the Neturei Karta movement called it “the most important work since (our literal and fundamentalist interpretation of) the Torah.”

Originally written in his native Farsi, Ahmadinejad’s book is also set to break records as the most popular translated work in Arabic speaking countries. It has already surpassed sales of Mein Kampf and lags slightly behind Protocols of the Elders of Zion, staples of many countries’ Philosophy and History curricula respectively. The bestseller is flying off of bookshelves faster than local printers can restock them. “We’re not equipped for this kind of demand for a new book,” said Tariq Nidal, CEO of leading Gaza printing house Sword of Allah Publications. “Aside from printing replacement Quarans for those destroyed in bull-dozed houses, we usually just use our bin Guterman press as an excuse to buy large quantities of high-velocity ball bearings for our other projects.” Far from a local phenomenon, the book is catching on in a number of Western book clubs as well and Hollywood buzz is that American director Mel Gibson is “very interested” in acquiring the film rights to the best-seller. Although the Academy Award winner’s previous blockbuster Passion of the Christ was banned from Iranian cinemas several years ago, Gibson and Ahmadinejad remain close friends. “Mah and I have been trying to collaborate on something like this for a while but it’s been tough to find common creative ground until now,” Gibson told Good Morning Iran audiences last week. Gibson has learned his lesson after narrowly skirted condemnation for a public anti-Semitic tirade by revealing that he was drunk at the time. He has assured his concerned Hollywood executives that if necessary he will remain inebriated for as long as it takes to bring his latest violent anti-Semitic tirade into world-wide release next fall.