Saddam & Me In which our intrepid author explores the nature of good and evil, admits to some troubling desires and reminisces on what it's like to share a birthday with one of the most evil men on the planet. While most people share birthdays with celebrities like Melanie Griffith or maybe at worst, Don Rickles, I share my birthday, April 28th, with none other than Saddam " I've named everything in Iraq after me" Hussein. I found this out on my fifteenth birthday, when my parents bought me one of those tiny little books they sell at Hallmark filled with useless facts about your special day. I can only assume that the good people at Hallmark must have had a hell of a time finding famous people born on my birthday and having to include somebody, included Saddam. April 28th also happens to be Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is ironic to you, I'm sure, but really a bummer for me. Since I turned fifteen (almost nine years ago), I occasionally have thought about this man who usually celebrates his birthday by having his Republican Guard fire several hundreds rounds of ammunition into the air over Liberation Square. Like him, I enjoy making a big deal out of my birthday. I consider birthday's to be the one day out of the year that someone can do whatever they please and everyone has to like it. Unlike Saddam, though, I limit my megalomania the other 364 days of the year. Still, I can't help but wondering what it is that divides us, Saddam and I. I mean other than the fact that he's a despotic torturer who has ruled with fear and force, while my most notable leadership position so far has been being the Senior Patrol Leader of my Boy Scout Troop. Saddam was born in the tiny town of Auja in 1937, growing up in a mud brick village northwest of Baghdad. I was conceived in a trailer park just downwind of the the local race horse track in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1979. His parents were poor farmers, mine were a policeman and a respiratory therapist. Saddam joined the Socialist Baath Party when he turned 19. In my high school's 1996 mock presidential election, I campaigned vigorously for Monica Moorehead, who was the Socialist candidate. She lost, but garnered a remarkable 15% of the vote. Of course, I did that just for fun, though I think Saddam was more serious. Three years after Saddam joined the party he took part in a failed assassination plot against Iraqi Prime Minister Abudul Karim Kassim and was forced to flee the country for several years. I have not tried to assassinate anyone, though I have been known to say mean things about my "former high school rival" Andy Hicks, making me a definite part of his own personal Axis of Evil. In 1968, Saddam took part in the revolt that put Gen. Ahmed Hassan Bakr into power in Iraq. Eleven years later he deposed Bakr and made himself sole ruler of Iraq. I moved to New York and pretended to be living in a tony West Village apartment in a 1999 interview with the New York Post, after a real estate friend of mine was unable to get any of his own clients to agree to be interviewed. I was also on MTV, briefly, where I "boy band danced". I failed to depose Bryan McFadden. In the 80's Saddam used chemical weapons to quell a Kurdish uprising in the North. In the 80's my favorite television shows were "Punky Brewster", "Mr. Belvedere" and "Silver Spoons". Hussein has tried to invade Iran (with the help of the U.S.) and Kuwait (not so much help). He was unsuccessful on both occasions. I spent many of my underage years getting into clubs and bars with fake I.D.'s and was, most of the time, pretty successful. Saddam has posters of himself plastered on almost every building of any importance in Iraq. I admit, I'd be pretty cool with having my face plastered all over Times Square, but not if it requires the brutal slaughtering of women and children (heck, men too). Mr. Hussein is surrounded by a cadre of elite soldiers and yes-men who follow him out of fear. I am occasionally surrounded by a cadre of hard-drinking friends who on occasion, regardless of their sobriety, feel the urge to tell me just how dorky I am. Unlike Saddam, I do not summarily execute them. Saddam uses dozens of doubles to confuse the populace as to his exact location. I've been told I look a little like "An American Werewolf in Paris" star Tom Everett Scott. In short, we have a lot in common. Other than the fact that Saddam is a man with utterly no morals, who is willing to kill his own people if they get unruly and who has absolutely no respect for the lives of anyone other than his own. Also, I am not a dead man.

posted by Japhy at 4/07/2003 09:00:00 PM || #