“Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia” and America is hated for it

The 50 Funniest American Writers according to Andy Borowitz includes a news article from The Onion announcing the U.S. deployment of “…more than 75,000 vowels to the war-torn region of Bosnia” (Borowitz 335) to help aid in the spelling of words such as “…Sjlbvdnzv and Grznc…” (336). This is enough to put a smile on the faces of most. The illustrated situation is absurd; can’t you just picture paper letters raining down from C-130s over a babbling, incoherent crowd of Bosnians? We laugh because these things don’t, and shouldn’t go together; therefore, this parable falls under the Incongruity Theory of humor as explained in Morreall’s Comic Relief. The incongruity theory says that we laugh or find a situation humorous when we perceive two things to be incongruous. Incongruity, in most modern theories, is defined as “…some thing or event we perceive or think about [which] violates our normal mental patterns and normal expectations” (Morreall 11). We usually associate deployments with bombs, not A’s, E’s, I’s, O’s, and U’s; the U.S. often generously gives supplies, not vowels, to war-torn countries around the world. But as bizarre and amusing as this fictional situation is, it is being used to make a very bold statement. Though war and vowels are incongruous, the U.S.’s position in this fictional situation is all too true and not absurd at all. Too often, the U.S. has to stick its nose in other people’s business. Even given this absurd example, why do we think we have the right to change the language of a nation because we have trouble pronouncing the words? How self-centered and pompous are we? We are a wealthy nation with a lot of resources and often times we like to extend a helping hand to struggling nations. What we really do in these situations is help these nations to be more like us. In times of war as well, America likes to be the police of the world, sending troops to support a side or keep the peace. Why is that our job? No one appointed us to that position, and most of the world doesn’t like it either. Even Americans do not like the decisions like this that our government makes. So as ridiculous (and humorous) as littering the sky with vowels may seem, it is being used to point out how ridiculous it is that America, though usually through good intentions, attempts to help and convert every nation in the world to our way of existence. To America, it is our way or the highway (or in this case, the incoherent way).