If You Cannot Find Osama: Bomb Iraq!

Part Three

By Connie Corcoran Wilson, M.S.

(*As Installment Number Two ended, our fearless heroine was returning to her humble cottage, where her husband, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, impatiently waited to crank up a video. She was supposed to have been “having tacos with the girls” from 5 to 7 p.m.; it was now 10:30 p.m. Our accordion-toting adventurer lugged this 100-lb. monstrosity (her accordion; not her husband) across several snow banks in downtown Rock Island, Illinois, in order to regale the anti-war folks assembled at the Midwest Writing Center with several choruses of  “If You Cannot Find Osama, Bomb Iraq!”  We open on a decidedly untranquil domestic scene where the lateness of the hour has failed to endear her to her long-suffering Republican husband. . . .
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When I came home late from “tacos,” my husband wanted to know where I had been.
 
I said, “I was playing my accordion at an anti-war rally.”
 
He said, “Sure you were,” rather wryly, and walked off, noting that he had expected me home hours ago, so that we might watch “Kill Bill: Volume I.”

I also made a stand-up appearance at our local comedy club, Penguin's, on the final Wednesday of February.  I worked this in during the Wednesday night “taco night” with the girls, so that my husband would be none the wiser.  I did so on a dare. (“You wouldn't!” A:  Oh, yes, I would!)

My 36-year marriage is a little like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver's, only without the support for Arnold from Maria.  So, I try to keep a low political profile whenever possible.  (Which is why I am writing for this blog.)

I included a lot of political humor in my Penguin's Club routine, along the lines of, “What did Gennifer Flowers say, when asked if her affair with Bill Clinton was similar to that of Bill and Monica Lewinsky's?”

A:  “Close, but no cigar.”

I also shared the joke that historians had decided to call Bill Clinton's eight years in office “Sex Between the Bushes.”  But never mind about that. I find myself reminiscing for “the good old days” when our biggest problem was whether a blue dress was or was not dry-cleaned, rather than whether 707 servicemen are dead and another 3,800 or so wounded on foreign shores.

On that last Wednesday in February at Penguin's Comedy Club in Bettendorf, Iowa, it was my singing of “If You Cannot Find Osama: Bomb Iraq!” that was the featured set-piece of the evening's festivities.  My tale of how Mr. Pin-headed (OK…pin-striped) Engineer Person pursued me into the parking lot of WVIK (next time: mace, I'm thinking) was greeted with chuckles.  I also told about the after-math of my “daring to be different” on the air.

The morning after my radio faux pas, I got a phone call from the woman who was the volunteer coordinator.  Unfortunately, she chose to call me at 8:00 A.M. and it is well-known amongst friends and acquaintances that calls to me before 10 A.M. are ill-advised.

She went in to a long, droning speech about how we couldn't have this sort of shenanigans on the air.  I was half-asleep and so tired that, at one point, I laid the telephone down on the pillow next to me until the droning stopped.

Then, I picked up the phone and shared the information with the nice lady that if Mr. Pin-headed Engineer Person pursued me in to the parking lot, screaming and yapping at my heels one more time, I would be forced to use mace. Or, barring that, I would kick him right in the b-lls. (Can I say “b-lls” on a blog? Oh, well. I just did. Please gasp in unison and think of beach balls.) I cheerily asked her to pass this information along to Mr. Pin-headed Engineer person, for his own health and safety.

I also spent long, futile hours making phone calls to various mucky-mucks affiliated with the station, in a vain attempt to find out exactly what the FCC “rules and regulations” actually were. Or where.  I remember asking, “Was it my singing? Was that what set him off?”

I never found out what the FCC rules and regulations were. After the early-morning phone call from the previously nice (now decidedly frosty) volunteer lady, I got a letter from her, warning me that political commentary of this sort had no place in a democracy, since my opinion did not support our fearless (and thoughtless) leader's (George W's) bombing of a nearly defenseless country that hadn't attacked us first.

After we actually bombed these poor schmucks back to the Stone Age, in keeping with George W. Bush's “Whack-a-Mole” foreign policy commitment (That is what the experts actually call it!), I gave up any thought that the lives of innocent civilians and servicemen could be saved by the likes of me singing and playing the accordion.
 
But I still think it's a keen song, and I want to give public credit to the author of the ditty, whoever he is and wherever he may be (and you know who you are) and say, “Hey! The blind and visually-impaired listeners with a special receiver within a ten-mile radius of WVIK in Rock Island, Illinois, thank you!”

I also wrote a letter to the previously nice volunteer coordinator lady, saying that I didn't really think that the walls of WVIK would come tumbling down just because I sang two stanzas of “the forbidden song,” as I now call this ditty. A song which goes right up there in the annals with the “forbidden dance,” the Lambada.

And, if all else fails, and you cannot find Osama: Bomb Iraq! 
 
Nothing else left of value there now, anyway!

(*Next installment, local disc jockeys Dwyer & Michaels refuse to do “spots” for Connie's book, because, they say, the story above makes her “unpatriotic.” Learn about this, how to play the accordion in ten easy lessons, and how not to continue on the radio in any capacity in our next installment.  I'm really just making the part about the accordion up to see if you are reading this.)

Copyright 2004 by Connie Corcoran Wilson. All rights reserved.  Feel free to duplicate or distribute this file, as long as the content is not changed and this copyrighted notice is intact. Thank you. Check out Connie's book Both Sides Now, from which this is excerpted, at www.ConnieCorcoranWilson.com; at Amazon.com or at Barnes&Noble.com. Send nice notes to Einnoc10@Aol.com. Send nasty notes to GeorgeWBush@. . . I'll let you look it up for yourself.