September 1, 2005

TIMES HUMOR: BOROWITZ REPORT

Rappers could skip firearms training, Pentagon believes

One day after rap mogul Suge Knight was shot in the leg at a party celebrating the MTV Music Awards, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Army would start recruiting soldiers for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at all future installments of the popular awards show.

“We believe that the highest concentration of potential enlistees with extensive firearms experience may in fact be at the MTV Music Awards,” Mr. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.

The Defense Secretary said he was “impressed” when he heard that someone at the awards party had successfully shot Mr. Knight: “If one of those fellows had good enough aim to hit Suge Knight in the leg, imagine what they could do to some of those pesky Iraqi insurgents.”

He said that by recruiting soldiers at the MTV Music Awards, the Army would be gaining a pool of enlistees who would require no firearms training whatsoever, saving the Pentagon and U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars a year.

“Teaching these guys how to use a gun would be a serious waste of time,” Mr. Rumsfeld said. “It would be like teaching Courtney Love how to snort powder up her nose.”

While the Defense Secretary would not specify how the Army would induce rappers to enlist, he told reporters, “We are fully prepared to offer them a Cadillac Escalade.”

Elsewhere, in medical news, redheads who spend time in the sun and eat French fries and potato chips should already be dead by now.

For more from Andy Borowitz go to www.borowitzreport.com. Andy Borowitz is a nationally syndicated humor columnist whose work can be found in Newsweek and other publications.