The moustache should have been a giveaway.

April 14, 2003 4:57 PM

Was Saddam a gay porn star? The answer is a resounding "maybe"! It all depends on how much you want to rely on Yahoo! Entertainment news to bring you the most accurate news, but there it is nonetheless. True or false, this has to one of the more "interesting" pieces to come out of Operation Iraqi Freedom so far.
posted by Hackworth (26 comments total)

Al-Sabah claims that Saddam, then a struggling law student, acted in porn to make ends meet -- and because he was addicted to gay sex.

Yeah sure, I suppose Satan was his plaything, too.
posted by jeremias at 5:06 PM on April 14, 2003

"Was Saddam a gay porn star?"

Yes. The Weekly World News is always trustworthy.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:06 PM on April 14, 2003

This is hilarious, but keep in mind the phrase "Weekly World News" that's plastered in the upper right-hand corner. Their track record is on par with Al Jazeera or CNN :) (kidding of course!)
posted by webratta at 5:07 PM on April 14, 2003

like, what is this? stupidunfunnyshitfilter?
posted by luckyclone at 5:08 PM on April 14, 2003

Try Weekly World News Filter.
posted by pmurray63 at 5:13 PM on April 14, 2003

Regardless of it's veracity, this seems like little more than an appeal to homophobia. In a nation where it's still quite difficult to be gay, casting the enemy as a homosexual deviant isn't a good thing.
posted by aladfar at 5:13 PM on April 14, 2003

Well, on the one hand, it's kind of funny in the way unexpected things generally are.

The phrases like "--and also addicted to gay sex." are a throwback to the days when "holy god he's gay" was a damning indictment of someone's moral character. So, bah.

On preview, what aladfar said. Although I still dislike the word "homophobia".
posted by kavasa at 5:14 PM on April 14, 2003

But he's married!!
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:27 PM on April 14, 2003

"Is that a weapon of mass destruction, or are you just happy to see me?"
posted by digaman at 5:30 PM on April 14, 2003

Well, I have often wondered about the "special friendship" he seemed to have with Tariq Aziz...

(not that there's anything wrong with that)
posted by Soliloquy at 5:43 PM on April 14, 2003

Well he did have a bachelor pad.
posted by condour75 at 6:02 PM on April 14, 2003

I thought that guy looked familiar! I mean, someone told me and....er....oh hell!
posted by photoslob at 6:06 PM on April 14, 2003

Yeah, this report is roughly as credible as EVERY report where they were supposed to have uncovered a WMD stockpile, but somehow less offensive.
posted by UrbanFigaro at 6:10 PM on April 14, 2003

This photoshop is so totally awesome.
posted by bingbangbong at 6:17 PM on April 14, 2003

The Weekly World News? Isn't that the one that runs all those batboy stories?

Ah, wait. Here it is....
Batboy rules!
posted by psmealey at 6:34 PM on April 14, 2003

Yeah, that's really obvious...
posted by delmoi at 6:37 PM on April 14, 2003

Life imitates South Park.
posted by MrBaliHai at 6:39 PM on April 14, 2003

"Saddam's acting in the picture is actually quite good," al-Sabah notes. "One scene, in which he buries his face in a pillow and cries, is so touching you almost can forget you're watching a low-budget sexploitation film."

It's good to know a ruthless despot has a sensitive side.
posted by Samsonov14 at 7:15 PM on April 14, 2003

I also have it on good authority that if you send him your bank account info, he'll deposit some of his fortune in it so he can smuggle it out of the country. He'll even split it with you as thanks for helping him out!
posted by Hackworth at 7:29 PM on April 14, 2003

Or was he a McDonalds Employee?
posted by ejoey at 9:10 PM on April 14, 2003

One porn film does not a porn "star" make. It takes years of hard work and sacrifice to truly make it To The Top! (Sorry, I had Dirk Diggler's "You're A Winner" from Boogie Nights stuck in my head there...)
posted by shecky57 at 10:46 PM on April 14, 2003

Less noise. More signal, please.
posted by starkeffect at 12:40 AM on April 15, 2003

From 1963 to 1968 Saddam was in jail until freed during a Ba'ath party military coup, which led to his rise to power. A guy who started his career with a 1959 assassination attempt rarely has the time to get day passes from Middle Eastern jails to do a porn shoot.

This sounds like gross, anti-gay propaganda to me. After Nicolae Ceaucescu was shot news reports in Romania immediately began reporting that he was Gypsy or Tatar, anything but Romanian. In that case it was ethnic slander against groups generally despised - in this case it is homophobic slander. And it works on the home fronts. Truth is always the first victim.
posted by zaelic at 2:34 AM on April 15, 2003

Less noise. More signal, please.

Less constipation. More sense of humor, please.
posted by jonmc at 5:59 AM on April 15, 2003

I seem to remember that years ago The weekly World News was genuinely batshit. Does anyone else feel like the current editorial staff is a bunch of PoMo english majors? Everytime I see one on the checkout these days it seems a little "wink-wink"-ish: more like The Onion or something than a classic tabloid. Maybe it's just me.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:08 AM on April 15, 2003

From 1963 to 1968 Saddam was in jail

Exactly, that's why this was a prison flick! What I wouldn't do for a job writing horse shit for the WWN, of course I would hope to steer clear of preying on reader's homophobia. On an interesting side note, there was a story in my home town once that was actually word for word true, it hardly ran in the mainstream media, but the WWN ran it right up front. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, this article is of course way over on the fiction side.
posted by Pollomacho at 7:49 AM on April 15, 2003