Puppets of the Terrorist Conspiracy

Egyptian authorities are investigating absurd
charges that a Vodafone commercial featuring a felt puppet
contains coded terrorist messages:

Appearing on a television show on Tahrir channel
on Tuesday after the prosecution referred the case for
investigation, [activist Ahmed Spider] dissects the ad, deducing
terrorist plots in almost every word and shot of the humorous
commercial.

First, Spider says that the opening scene, which shows a cactus
plant with Christmas decorations, is an implicit threat.

Spider says that using the spiny cactus instead of the Christmas
tree is a threat of violence, symbolized by a Christmas ball on the
cactus, which he says looks like a bomb. He adds that the fact that
the cactus has four branches similar to the four-finger salute
taken up by Muslim Brotherhood supporters, means that the Muslim
Brotherhood are behind the message.

Spider proceeds to crack the code of the remainder of the
conversation, interpreting Christmas turkeys and the search for the
old phone line as evidence of terrorist attacks and the work of
secret agents and foreign intelligence.

He interprets [the puppet] Abla Fahita’’ mention of her friend
“Mama Toutou” to be a coded reference to the Muslim Brotherhood.
When Fahita retells Mama Toutou’s ordeal of her set of artificial
teeth freezing from the cold, he says that this is a reference to
the freezing of the Muslim Brotherhood’s assets.

The Web is filled with this sort of dubious deconstruction —
claiming, say, that a Batman movie includes veiled
references to the coming Sandy Hook and
Aurora massacres, or that Lady Gaga videos are filled with
signs of Illuminati
mind control. But Mr. Spider, whose past glories include
accusing the Freemasons of being behind the demonstrations at
Tahrir Square, managed to inspire an official inquiry, complete
with a representative of the company coming to court to answer the
charges.

I wish I could report that America’s authorities
would never dabble in this sort of paranoid reading of popular
culture. Alas, I know
better than
that.

Elsewhere in Reason: The Al
Qaeda ties of Sesame Street‘s Bert.

[Via Sarah
Carr.]