catapult magazine

I know this is ancient history by now, but I was thinking again today about some of the Iraqi leaders the Americans have captured. They have hard Arabic names, so the media gives them nicknames like Chemical Ali and Mrs Anthrax — and wasn’t there another one? I guess if Hitler’s name had been Muhammad-Ibrahim we would have called him Mr Holocaust.

When I hear the media say, “Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as Mrs. Anthrax,” it makes me wonder who knows her as that? When my mom heard this name, she immediately assumed there was some connection between this woman and the anthrax mailings in the US last year. I understand that it’s hard and boring for the media to call her Ms. Ammash, but to be fair then, they should call Kim Jong Il “Dictator Nuke” and Vladimir Putin “KGB Bob.” Maybe Bush should more commonly be known as “Smok’em-out-of-their-holes Georgie.”

What do you think? Should the news media give demeaning nicknames to people with hard names?

I was under the impression that it was either the UN inspectors or the US gov’t that gave these nicknames. Or perhaps it was the Iraqi’s themselves who gave the nicknames?

I Bush might take his name as a compliment.

It would be a good research project to find out where they come from. Is anybody in a program where they can get credit for writing this paper so we can all be enlightened?

Does anybody else find that these nicknames trivialize the crimes committed by these individuals?