BLACK BUSH

This is an editorial from the Daily Star....

Every time a friend or relative returns from the States, they talk about “The Chapelle Show”—evidently the funniest thing to happen to America since George W became president.

That’s “The Chapelle Show”—as in Dave Chapelle—for those of you who don’t watch television or whose remote control mysteriously disappeared during the African Champions League tournament.

Dave Chapelle is an irritant in Bush’s America, a boil on the nation’s backside. His humour is irreverent, dirty, provocative, not-at-all politically correct, and sometimes even funny. Imagine, if you will, a skit about the first black man taking a dump in a white toilet á la Rosa Parks’ famous civil rights bus ride and you pretty much get the picture (whether you want to or not).

Of course Egypt has its own tradition of social and political comedy: the films and plays of Adel Iman, the music and poetry of El-Sheikh Imam and Ahmed Fouad Negm, the cartoons of Mustafa Hussein, the jokes of Ahmed Ragab—but none of it is, let’s say, as “politically direct” as Dave Chapelle—and none of it is pumped into millions of households on a nightly basis.

Take “Black Bush” for example, where this African-American comedian and his gangsta posse impersonate the Texan-American president and his cowboy cabinet at a press conference during the invasion of Iraq:

Reporter: “Mr. President, why are you attacking Saddam Hussein?”

Black Bush: “That nigger tried to kill my father!”

Reporter: “Mr. President, aren’t you concerned about the negative remarks of Kofi Annan and the United Nations Security Council?”

Black Bush: “U.N.? You have a problem with that? You know what you should do? Sanction me! Sanction me with your army! Oh wait a minute, you don’t have an army; I guess that means you have to shut the f*** up! That’s what I’d do if I didn’t have no army. I’d shut the f*** up! Kofi Annan? I ain’t takin’ orders from no African!”

Can we imagine the same skit? Instead of Sa’eedi f’il gama’a al-amriciyya we’d have Sa’eedi f’il riyassa starring Mohamed Heneidi, where he and his hashya in their freshly ironed galabeyas respond to reporters about regional politics:

Question: “How can we improve the situation in Palestine?”

Answer: “They should thank God and make peace with their neighbours in India.”

Question: “How do you feel about free elections?”

Answer: “Something for free?! Let’s have more of it!”

So where is “The El-Far Show”? As in Adel El-Far—for those of you who either never went to a Ramadan tent in the 1990’s, or who get very defensive when people make fun of Fifi Abdou.

Cairo is the joke capital of the world: It’s the theatre of the absurd delivered live to your doorstep every morning! Why can’t we move it from the aahwa to Orbit? We call ourselves awlad al-nukta, but when it comes to public performance we are awlad al-nakad.

South-east Asians in London have entire shows—“The Kumars at No. 42” and “Goodness Gracious Me”—devoted to making fun of themselves. Dave Chapelle does the same thing for black America.

It means they’ve arrived; they’re in on the joke. The ability to laugh at themselves is a marker of how well these groups have integrated into global culture.

Are we really that fragile? Where is our self-confidence?

Even our ancient ancestors had a sense of humour. Pottery has been found with one side depicting a traditional scene of a Pharaoh in his chariot, surrounded by his army, attacking a walled city; while the other shows the same scene except that mice have replaced the Egyptian army, cats defend the walls, and the mouse-king's chariot is pulled by dogs rearing like horses.

No doubt this was side-splitting stuff in the second millennium B.C. The point is that they all had a laugh, there were no pottery laws that threatened artists with entombment, and everybody was just a lot more chilled out.

Our comedy is fresh, biting, sexy, political and hilarious. If there’s anything we do well in this country, it’s insulting the crap out of each other. And this is perfect for prime time television. What could be closer to the give-and-take of rapid fire hip-hop culture than our very own radh? Our bawab’s wife would wipe the floor with Dave Chapelle any day of the week!

On top of all this, why should Americans have all the fun? With a president like theirs, they don’t need comedians. Some of the real life stuff the White Bush says is better then anything his black counterpart can come up with. On 10 January 2005 at a press conference at the White House, George W said: “Who could have possibly envisioned an erection in Iraq at this point in history?" Awlad al-nukta indeed.