Beckham Makes Another List

After being a part of lists based on such things as beauty and wealth, the Galaxy's savior has finally hit the big time: al-Qaeda hit list. Taking a page out of Joseph Stalin's playbook, David Beckham has joined the likes of Justin Timberlake and Eminem as a target of Islamist extremists.

As legend has it, Stalin threatened to assassinate John Wayne in an effort to silence the ardent anti-communist and deal a crushing blow to the American cultural machine against the backdrop of the Cold War. This being the new millennium, though, Beckham (as well as Wayne Rooney and Tierry Henry) was threatened not by the Soviets but by some al-Qaeda wannabes with internet access and a grievance against Western cultural imperialism. The threat came in the form of a video posted on YouTube.

Watching the video, though, it doesn't exactly seem like the most sophisticated of plots. There's a shot of Eminem in a newspaper with the headline, "This Is the Way to Hellfire." There's a photo of 2-Pac underneath the words, "Servant of Shaytaan." And a smiling Beckham is juxtaposed with the question, “What Made u Among the Losers?” In the end, it looks more like a low-budge PSA than a serious wake-up call to Western civilization.

Book tells how John Wayne survived Soviet assassination [Guardian]
Islam Base video [YouTube]

-ac