The Nose Knows

It was that damn Time Magazine cover that set me off.  The shocking one with the pretty Muslim girl on it.  Her nose brutally cut off.  I know it's been months later, but it still haunts me.
     "Somebody should do something," I said recently to my loving wife.
     "What about you?" my wife answered back.
     "Me?  I can't even get myself published in the El Paso Times without writing a column about the editor and three of his reporters.  What can I do?"
     Her challenge, however, stuck in my mind tighter than Rosie O'Donnell in an airplane seat.  What about me?  What could I do?  And what's up with these italics?
     I decided to get on the phone and confront Ms. Terry O'Neill, current president of NOW, the National Organization of Women.  I hadn't seen her since we attended the wedding of Ellen DeGeneres to Portia de Rossi.  We were both admiring an ice sculpture reproduction of a Georgia O'Keefe flower painting.
     "Are you from Tennessee?" she asked me, rather flirtatiously.
     "No, why?"
     "Because you're the only ten I see."
     I'm happily married to my fifth wife, and I told her so.  Ellen saw what was going on, and promptly ordered me to leave.
     "Nobody's switching teams on my watch," she said.  "We've already lost Anne Heche."
     And then Ellen whispered "call me" so that only I would hear.  But I digress...
     Terry was surprised to hear from me after such a long time.  I got right to the point.
     "What's NOW doing about the suffering of Muslim women?" I asked her point blank.
     She pretended not to know what I was talking about.  I continued.
     "For example, there was that woman who was recently accused of adultery and stoned to death.  Another woman was whipped because she accidentally showed a glimpse of her ankle.  Still another girl was beaten because she didn't take off some nail polish after her wedding.  And do you really want me to bring up female circumcision?"
     "There's nothing I can do about it.  None of them were denied their God-given right to have an abortion."
     "But Ms. O'Neill," I said, trying to keep it civil, "Muslim women aren't even allowed to laugh in public.  Muslim women are starving because the Taliban doesn't believe a female should be allowed to leave her home unaccompanied by a male family member.  There was one woman who was shot in the head in a public execution for the simple crime of reading a book."
     "Sorry, but we have bigger fish to fry."
     "Like what?"
     "Like a woman's right to her own body.  Her right to an abortion."
     "I don't understand.  I thought NOW was about women's rights."
     "It is."
     "Then what about those poor little schoogirls who had acid thrown on their faces as they were walking down the street?
     "Were they on their way to an abortion clinic?"
     "No, they were on their way to school!"
     "Then we're not interested."
 
 

Fifty Shades of Funny

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