M-TV Accidentally Honors 9/11 Hijackers

he 20th Annual M-TV Video Music Awards, held last Thursday night at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, served up its usual yearly helping of toned abs, wild costumes and music playing somewhere in the background, as expected. But viewers and M-TV executives alike were also treated to a surprise that few could have anticipated.

The show’s highlights were many and varied, including Madonna swapping STDs with Britney and Christina, rapper 50 Cent being shot 15 times during the ceremony but still returning for his musical performance, and Johnny Cash pulling a no-show, doing little to dispel most viewers’ assumptions that he died ten years ago. Host Chris Rock kept the show moving along at a rapid clip, and kept it funny by refusing to pretend that any of the nominated acts were any more than marginally talented.

In fact, the show took on such a party atmosphere that few even noticed when a diminutive Arab man named Sheik Omar Bakri accepted the award for Best New Artist for his album “Magnificent 19,� peppering the crowd with epithets during his acceptance speech in an accent so thick it could’ve shrouded an iceberg from an ocean liner. Many assumed Bakri was simply rapper Eminem’s newest protégé, failing to recognize him as the head of the radical Islamic group Al-Muhajiroun.

“That Sheik Omar was ate up,� gushed Smurf-like crooner Justin Timberlake. “Boy was so drunk he was talkin’ in tongues and shit. I can see why his fans is mad for him, that was righteous.�

In actuality, Sheik Bakri’s speech was the culmination of several months of planning by Al-Muhajiroun, whose members had infiltrated M-TV as interns and were able to slip Bakri’s non-existent album in as the Best New Artist winner in a tribute to the 19 hijackers who died on September 11th.

“The word magnificent is to attract if you like really the attention of the people to those particular 19 Muslims who in our eyes we see as Muslims what really they are — they are more than magnificent,� Sheik Bakri said, sort of in English. “In our eyes, they are the people who sacrifice their own life and that’s the most valuable thing and they offer it. It must be for a good reason. It must be for divine reason.�

Bakri may have misinterpreted the Video Music Awards crowd’s reaction to his remarks during the show, saying “the many Muslims present celebrated the comeuppance of the U.S.A.,� when in fact the crowd was cheering because Britney Spears’ cooch was momentarily visible on the big screen.

Bakri also considers his Best New Artist win to be sanctioned by God, explaining “If God did not permit that to happen, it would never happen,� and has thus far refused to return his moon-man statuette. Sheik Omar did, however, express regret that there was no Best Cover Art category, which could have honored the bizarre “Magnificent 19� album cover he had mocked up at great personal expense.

Network executives at M-TV seem alarmingly unphased by the incident, claiming that most of its viewers are too young to remember the September 11th terrorist attacks.

.S. District Judge Myron Thompson shocked the nation Friday, ruling that the entire South was in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s principle of separation of church and state, and ordering that all nine Southern states be removed from the Union immediately. Thompson, who incited national controversy the previous week when he ordered the removal of a 2.6-ton granite Ten Commandments monument from Alabama's state judicial building, defended his unprecedented action as merely a logical extension of federal law, dictated by the U.S. Constitution.

“South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee have for years stood in clear violation of the separation of religion and government, a basic concept upon which America was founded. From the highest levels of state government down to local law enforcement, Christianity has not only been favored, but has virtually stood as the law of the land for generations,� said Thompson, explaining his ruling. As of press time, it was unclear whether all Southern residents would be required to leave the country, or if the U.S. would cut its chigger-infested losses and draw up new borders.

With the nine Southern states understandably resistant to the order, Thompson has threatened each state with a $5 billion fine per day until they comply with the order and presumably pack up their shit. While the fines are expected to wipe out most Southern states in the first fifteen minutes, Arkansas has already defiantly suggested that it will pay the fine, just as soon as its luck evens out on the pull-tabs.

“This ruling is an outrage!� shouted Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, to no one in particular. “The South has just as much right to be in this country as all those uppity pagan states that follow the Constitution. Besides, where are we supposed to go? Mexico? Those bean-burners is all godless Catholics, ain’t they?�

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who came to local fame and prominence as the “Ten Commandments Judge� after refusing to remove a huge view-obstructing Ten Commandments bumpersticker from the windshield of his car, is credited with having sparked this series of events when he installed the offending monument in his courthouse. Moore took a break from selling homemade “I’m with Stupid & the Ten Commandments� t-shirts at local rock shows to organize several Constitution-burnings throughout the South this week.

“Yeah, this is a violation of our right to free speech, or something,� claimed a befuddled Moore. “Wait, can we go back to the Ten Commandments thing? I’m still pissed about that. This country’s laws were based on those Commandments! Mostly. And now we’ve got to hide ‘em in some back toilet? Sickening! No one can hide from that truth. ‘Thou shalt not kill?’ We got that law, don’t we? ‘Thou shalt not steal?’ Got that one too. ‘Thou shalt not…uh… fornicate… with… thy neighbor’s… uh, something…’ Anyway, you know where I’m going with this! Sickening!�

“And what about Kentucky, what’d they ever do that was so Constitutional?� questioned Gov. Riley when he realized the microphone was still on. “I always ‘spected they weren’t as God-fearing as the rest of us, and this just proves it. Well I hope you can have fun in your nice fancy country, Kentucky, when you’re burning in hell! Ha! Gotta admit I gotcha there.�

Despite an overabundance of spunk, legal experts agree that the Southern states are still likely to be evicted.

“Well, I guess on the bright side this means we can put our monument back,� mused Moore, looking around for a dolly.

So it turns out my sister's gay. Quite a big bomb-dropping, for a regular family, I guess. If you ask me it's just a ninth-inning attempt to reinvent herself like a third-rate Madonna, or a 1970s David Bowie. Anything to liven up her boring life and make herself more noticeable in a family spilling over the brim with shwat-a-veev—whatever it is the French call it.

Of course, she has her own story: That she's always been gay, that ugly dude she went to the prom with was actually a lesbian, and she told me this all before. I suppose it's possible I'd forget it, if I was watching TV or thinking about something else. When I get hungry I can't concentrate on nothing. But I still say she's making up this whole life as being gay just to be more interesting—backstory, that's the acting term we use.

She introduced me to her checkmate, or whatever the cool new term for it is, and we didn't get along very well. I didn't remember her name at all and kept calling her "Marcy," like that chick in the Peanuts cartoon. Like I'm the one who cut her hair into a bob and made her wear glasses. I tried to get along with her for my sister's sake, I really did, but the bitch was saying all kinds of stuff to bait me. Like she had never seen my show before and that it must have been tough being a child actress. I told her it must have been tough being a lesbian for her, and she took it like I was serious, instead of implying it was hard for her to find women to date her.

I'm taking all of this pretty cool, really. She invited me to her office for lunch and promised she wouldn't get mad if I made paperclip slingshots, so it was off to as good a start as we get. Then instead of a good old fashioned paperclip war I get this Very Special Episode of Ellen dropped on me, which I'm fine with, only to have her tell me my parents don't know and I can't tell them. She said they're so closed-minded and everything, but I would understand 'cause I'm more worldly. I almost knocked her out but her butch friend wrestled me to the floor. It may be true I've packed the pounds on my thighs a bit in the last few months, no reason to call me out on it, and I definitely don't see how it helps me be more understanding of lesbos.

In addition to keeping her secret that she's a sci-fi fan (I'm pretty sure Marcy was that dude dressed as the centaur at the convention, upon thinking about it) now I have to not tell everybody she's lesbo. I wouldn't mind keeping the lesbian secret, actually, if she'd just let me tell the sci-fi one. But no, she says mom and dad won't understand. I asked if she tried to talk to Toot but she said he only wants to talk about the Leader of Glorious Light, the one true prophet. Which leaves me alone to carry the new family secret.

The last thing I want to do, of course, is be the only secret-holder, 'cause then when it comes out to everyone they know it was me who let it slip. It's better when almost everyone knows because then they can't trace it back to me. So I told her mom and dad were down with lesbians, dad especially—they star in over half the tapes in his video collection. That only got macho Marcy to wrestle me to the floor again then, and don't tell anybody, but I'm afraid I'm starting to like it.

She gets all sobby on me then (sis, not Marcy, though Marcy did offer me a cigarette) and tells me I'm the only one left in the family she has any relationship with. I thought she was getting weird, but she meant "relationship" in the broad sense of the word. Or the sisterly, non-broad-on-broad sense. And she gives me a big hug and says she can trust me with her secret.

And I suppose she can. I mean, besides writing columns about it at the commune, but that's practically like keeping a secret. So we had a little bit of coffee, talked about my career, her career, the new gym her and Marcy are opening, and then I left without even getting any paperclips and rubberbands. But I did manage to get wrestled to the floor once more before I left.

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