Syria's President Assad has stepped over the line and we may be in the midst of tripping over it. It has always been a quandary. Get involved or just watch the atrocities pile up from the sidelines. The options seem so limited... at least to the public. But behind the scenes there are no limits to the search for a palatable strategy. I don't want to go Snowden all over the White House but soon after September 11, 2001, the federal government and the Defense Department went to Hollywood action writers for help in brainstorming fictional terrorist plots against American targets. Not sure if that lead to the fictional rational for invading Iraq but I believe it's high time we revisit the writers' creativity, but instead of action writers, this time we should be calling in comedy writers, leaving no Shecky, Lenny or Galifianakis unturned. There may no more powerful tool to diminish the influence of a repulsive tyrant then to publicly humiliate him. Who better to develop that type of wacko operation than those who make their living creating jokes, practical and impractical (see Jackass 1 and 2)? With a drone camera shooting video of these degrading, yet gratifying events and youtube taking it viral, Assad would never be able to show his face in public again..
We need to call on comedy film writers, sitcom staffs, talk show and sketch guys, even the brilliant team behind the Carrot Top phenomena (for prop attack possibilities). Only those involved with Dane Cook would be excluded. It would be called, "Comedy Writers Coming Up With Wild And Wacky Scenarios Alliance." The CWCUWWAWSA in itself provides a powerful satirical weapon to produce a degrading blow to Assad's serious image as well as an acronym so difficult to pronounce that developing a defense against it would in the least be awkward, and at most, sardonic. In actuality, the military has a long history of working with comedians and comedy writers. The 1962 "quarantine" on the shipment of offensive missiles to Cuba from the Soviet Union Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis was actually a Lenny Bruce/ Allan Funt gag that confused the Russians causing Khruschchev to back down. The C.I.A. continues to stonewall the report that our 1983 victory against great odds in Grenada was an improvisational Second City sketch that got out of hand.
Look, plain and simple, humor is generated by a sudden radical deviation from expected patterns of behavior in a situation characterized by incongruous or inappropriate elements, right? And comedy writers are extremely similar to the terrorists. The difference is that instead of using weapons of mass destruction to kill, they use jokes. With the world's security at stake, nothing should be considered out-of-bounds...even breaking the rule of threes. We need to push the envelope. If necessary, get in the envelope. No joke should be considered too provocative or graphic: exploding cigars, bio-germ squirting flowers, acid water over door jams, fake vomit, kick-me signs and whoopee cushions loud enough to embarrass entire cities, double, triple and the never before attempted, quadruple entendre. Classics like Stooge-type fingers to the eyes, self-inflicting fists to the head and baked bean generated, round-the-camp-fire gas attacks. Spit-takes, Polish jokes, pratfalls, pies in the face, and even the ever-annoying, sitcom, see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away misdirection.
No comedy writer would turn down the country's call to duty. We would be writing for something more important than comedy.
We would be writing for peace.
We would be writing for freedom.
And if I might be so bold, to paraphrase Brother Elwood Blues, "We would be on a mission from God."
How great would it be to watch the youtube view numbers pile up into the trillions as people all over the world watch and rewatch the world's newest despicable villain be demeaned in such an outlandish and public manner.
No American hurt. No deaths.
Just a bad guy being shamed as the world's biggest laughing stock.
No joke.
And if doesn't stop him.
We send in the Duck Dynasty boys.
Award-winning TV writer Steve Young is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful," www.greatfailure.com.