AP Article: Americans Turn to Paintball During War

[Cristobal]

Just saw this on front page the NY Times website:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/nati...The-Enemy.html

Looks like some folks in KT are playing a new variation on a VIP senario: find and shoot the person dressed as Saddam Hussein

[HoppysMag]

cant get in, we need to be registered to view....

but after 9-11 we had a guy took the time cover pic of binladen and cut it out to fit on his mask... funny stuff... hed run around we would take pot shots ar him

[andy13186]

My local golf driving range has huge posters of Saddam hussein and Osama bin laden at like the 150 yard mark=)

[Cristobal]

Originally posted by HoppysMag
cant get in, we need to be registered to view....

Oops, sorry, forgot about the registration part (by the way its free and takes about 30 seconds to do, and then you can read all you want)

But for those who don't want to:

Americans Turn to Paintball During War
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Filed at 1:55 p.m. ET

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- During World War II, Americans worked out their anxiety with cartoons portraying Hitler as a pig. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, they used toilet paper imprinted with Osama bin Laden's face. Today, they're shooting paintballs at Saddam Hussein.

Taking aim at the symbolic face of the enemy is an age-old way of coping during times of war.

``There's always a sense, especially when the outcome of a war is unclear, that sometimes you feel powerless to do anything and the one thing you can do is make fun of people.'' said Robert Thompson, a professor of media and pop culture at Syracuse University.

Outside Louisville, in Corydon, Ind., the winners of a radio station contest crawled through the woods, ``soldiers'' on the hunt for the leader of Iraq.

The crown of a shiny, olive-drab helmet rose from a clump of bushes, and Gary Henderson opened fire. ``I got Saddam, I got Saddam!'' Henderson screamed, bounding down the hill to confirm his kill.

Out stepped the captured leader, played by WTFX-FM deejay Scott Clark.

``This is all about giving people a chance to relieve any tension they might have because of the war,'' Clark said.

Dale Jefferson, 19, was drawn to the paintball promotion because he has Iraqi in-laws who oppose Saddam. ``I want to do it for them,'' Jefferson said.

Other disc jockeys sported blond wigs and dresses to give participants a shot at pseudo-Dixie Chicks, the country music trio whose singer Natalie Maines told a London audience last month that she was ashamed of President Bush. Maines later apologized, but around the country some fans trashed their compact discs in protest.

Paintballs are also flying at the Seaside Heights boardwalk in New Jersey, where patrons can spend $5 to fire 60 shots at a human decoy dressed in fatigues and wearing a mask resembling Saddam.

``Whenever you've got a huge national drama like this going on, there's a temptation in some ways to act it out, to integrate the whole thing,'' Thompson said.

``Even when I was a kid in the 1960s, somebody had to be the Germans, and everybody else got to be the good guys,'' he said.

A wave of anti-bin Laden gear appeared after his al-Qaida group was blamed for the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Besides the toilet paper, gun shops sold his face for target practice and a video game invited players to use their weapon to ``put bin Laden out like a cheap cigar.''

David Feinberg, a psychiatrist at the University of California-Los Angeles, said people who have no direct hand in the war need an outlet for the frustrations brought about by a lack of control.

He sees no danger in nasty jokes or pellet guns -- within limits.

``I think people that are using humor or mocking as a coping system also have to be extremely respectful of others that would not find this at all funny,'' he said.