Comics Find Lighter Side of Gulf Crisis

“A human shield? Take my mullah-in-law . . . please!” Barrump-bump! From the Top 10 lists of “Late Night” to the political humor of Will Durst and Harry Shearer, humorists are finding comedy in the gulf crisis.

On Aug. 2, Iraq invaded Kuwait and erased its Kuwaitibank Visa card’s $10-billion tab. That same night, “Late Night With David Letterman” offered “Saddam Hussein’s Top 10 Reasons for Invading Kuwait.”

Reason No. 6: “To impress Jodie Foster”, No. 3: “Didn’t have enough fuel and supplies to invade the moon”, and No. 1: . . . (drum roll) . . . “Because the sand is always grainier on the other side of the border.”

Nobody said it’s easy being a jester in the court of public opinion.

“It’s hard coming up with the lighter side of Armageddon,” said Will Durst, a comic who specializes in politics and writes a weekly column for the San Francisco Examiner. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is funny; the invasion wasn’t.

“When he invaded, it was tough,” Durst said. “I turned it on him and made him the focus: ‘You know Saddam is a bad guy because Switzerland is (angry) at him. Imagine: Switzerland, the Aunt Bea of the U.N.’

“I call Saddam Hussein a yuppie. His motives are something we can all understand: Greed. I mean, this is a corporate raider with tanks.

“At least this guy has a motive we can relate to--because (as Americans) we never got past the suicide-terrorist thing. I mean, how do those people get paid? Is it a union thing?”

Durst gets serious too: “It’s obvious that America would rather sacrifice its boys than car-pool.” Saddam, he said, “is the symptom, not the problem. Taking out Hussein would be like whiting out a tumor on an X-ray.”

Political impressionist Jim Morris made his name portraying Ronald Reagan as an amiable dimwit, but these days his focus is on George Bush and his handling of the gulf crisis. Morris says it’s a sensitive topic and he’s very careful.

“I am a lot kinder to the President in this situation than I am when he wants to cut funding for school lunch programs,” Morris said.

Then, in the voice he calls “a cross between Liberace, Jack Nicholson and Mister Rogers,” Morris drawls, “I don’t hafta defend the way I been handlin’ the crisis. M’ door’s always open. ‘M never there, but m’ door’s always open.’ ”

Some top comedians aren’t using the gulf crisis. “Robert Klein has nothing on the Middle East,” said his publicist, Glen Schwartz. Richard Belzer said he’s too worried about the situation to find it funny.

“My problem is that Americans have such a short attention span that they’re going to get bored and almost will something to happen,” Belzer said. “I’d rather be bored for the rest of my life than have one 18-year-old get his head blown off because we’re not prudent enough to conserve oil.”

Harry Shearer, a comedian, writer, star and co-author of the pseudo-documentary “This Is Spinal Tap” and occasional voice on “The Simpsons,” uses the gulf crisis in “Le Show,” his weekly National Public Radio program.

“ ‘Le Show’ is basically a topically oriented show,” Shearer said. “I’m almost obliged to do material about the crisis. For the last four weeks it has pretty much been the only subject.”

A war without fighting is funny. Shearer acknowledges that gulf crisis humor risks offending people when a good joke is suddenly made tasteless by events, but he’s also quite careful about his timing.

“I think it doesn’t start to get risky, really, until body bags start coming back,” he said. “Then all the equations start changing.”