The Grass Just Might Be Greener In Afghanistan

Someone famous once said that one can judge a civilization by the way it treats its criminals. I say that one can judge a civilization by its reality-TV game shows about the way it treats its criminals.

These days, what with the asymmetrical warfare, the Taliban probably has neither the time nor the energy to enforce its psychotic version of shariah law, but I’ve heard that they used to cut off a petty thief’s hand every now and again. I tend to believe these nasty rumors because the Taliban are obviously human rights abusers, brutal to the core, and I’m still pissed off about when they blew up those giant Buddha heads. I think it’s safe to assume that somewhere -- whether in Af/Pak-istan or somewhere else like, say, northern Nigeria or maybe Saudi Arabia -- this practice (the hand-chopping, that is) continues.

Meanwhile, in the state of California, a person can steal a few golf clubs or a handful of video cassettes and end up going to prison for, respectively, 25-years-to-life or 50-years-to-life. (I may have matched these prison terms up vice verse with the thefts, but whatever.) This draconian justice has been green-lighted by both the California and the federal Supreme Courts. This shit is real; it happens. I’m not a lawyer, but for $50 I could find the cases and cite them.

So...you get some poor, thieving sap from Waziristan or wherever who’s headed for the chopping block and you offer him a deal where he gets to keep his hand in exchange for his doing a lengthy stint in the Golden State’s slammer. Then you find some dude in California facing 25-to-life for petty theft who thinks that he’d rather lose a hand than lose that much time, and you offer to send him away to some crazy-ass place where they’ll set him free once they’ve lopped off a hand. It’s the old switcheroo. Mohammed is sitting around cracking his knuckles and bored out of his skull (except when he’s getting gang-raped), and Johnny’s always moping and whining about how freedom’s no fun when you’ve only got one hand. The audience votes for a winner (i.e., whichever contestant seems happiest with his choice, I guess), and the winner gets a million bucks. And the feel-good twist to the season finale: Mohammed gets an opportunity to be released from prison if he’ll agree to go and serve out his sentence as Johnny’s right-hand man.

Then, next year, we get to see their adventures together. (True, the competition aspect of the show will be lost, but this second season can focus in on character delineation and cross-cultural rapport.)