His picture appears on toilet paper. Gun shops are selling his face for target practice. And in the border town of McAllen, Texas, a company is making and selling pinatas with his likeness.
More than a month after the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the demonization of the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden is well under way.
There are anti-bin Laden songs and a video game in which the player unloads a gun at a bobbing, weaving bin Laden behind a liquor store counter and is invited "to put bin Laden out like a cheap cigar."
With the touch of a button, barbs and black humor fly like shrapnel across the Internet.
E-mailed jokes also are hurtling through cyberspace. A sampling:
Q: How do you play bin Laden Bingo?
A: B-52 ... F-16 ... B-1 ... M-16.
All this reflects a need among Americans to vent their rage, scholars said.
"Terrorism is faceless. Every once in a while we have to put faces on it," said Edward Turzanski, a political scientist at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
But some researchers question whether centering the national ire on one man is a wise course.
Demonization can backfire, said Warren Haffar, director of the International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania.
"Often times, these people stick around and we have to look at them, deal with them in a different capacity," he said, noting that the US spent years demonizing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "Now we're trying to reconstruct his identity in a way that is positive."
Some also say demonizing bin Laden runs the risk of oversimplifying the turmoil that's troubled the Middle East for decades.
"He's the latest poster boy, but what if we lose our poster boy, what if he is captured or killed?" asked Clark McCauley, a professor of social psychology at Bryn Mawr College who is also with the Solomon Asch Center for Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania.
"A lot of Americans will say it was a success, let's stop messing around, go home, we win. But the problem is considerably deeper than one guy, and we're going to be in a lot of trouble."
CARROT AND STICK: While unrelenting in its military threats, China attracted nearly 40,000 Taiwanese to over 400 business events last year Nearly 40,000 Taiwanese last year joined industry events in China, such as conferences and trade fairs, supported by the Chinese government, a study showed yesterday, as Beijing ramps up a charm offensive toward Taipei alongside military pressure. China has long taken a carrot-and-stick approach to Taiwan, threatening it with the prospect of military action while reaching out to those it believes are amenable to Beijing’s point of view. Taiwanese security officials are wary of what they see as Beijing’s influence campaigns to sway public opinion after Taipei and Beijing gradually resumed travel links halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but the scale of
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
Pope Francis is be laid to rest on Saturday after lying in state for three days in St Peter’s Basilica, where the faithful are expected to flock to pay their respects to history’s first Latin American pontiff. The cardinals met yesterday in the Vatican’s synod hall to chart the next steps before a conclave begins to choose Francis’ successor, as condolences poured in from around the world. According to current norms, the conclave must begin between May 5 and 10. The cardinals set the funeral for Saturday at 10am in St Peter’s Square, to be celebrated by the dean of the College
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s