You say Qadhafi, I say Gaddafi

 

World leaders are struggling to reach a consensus on how to deal with the upheaval in Libya. Many questions remain unanswered:

Will NATO’s no-fly zone be enough to convince Muammar to head for Club Fled?

Will Angela Merkel ever speak to Nicholas Sarkozy again?

Will Muammar’s wardrobe changes keep pace with Hillary’s hairdos?

Will President Obama’s brackets prevail in the White House March Madness pool?

But these weighty matters pale in comparison to the quandary now confronting copy editors throughout the world, who have utterly failed to address a central issue in this crisis:

Does anybody know how to spell Muammar’s last name?

The New York Times prefers the formal Mr. El Qaddafi. The Wall Street Journal opts for the Brooklyn-style Gaddafi. We’ve seen at least six other permutations in leading publications recently.

The New York Post chose Khadhafi, which they famously immortalized years ago when they doctored a picture of Muammar, putting a dress on him and running the photo on the front page under the unforgettable headline: KHADHAFI GOES DAFFY!

Since Business Facilities is an international publication, we believe we have the standing to settle this matter once and for all. We propose to apply what we are now calling the Lady Gaga Rule, also known as the Saddam Protocol. The premise is simple: when an international figure manages to irritate everybody on the planet at the same time, we always will refer to this person by their first name or a handy nickname.

So from now on, it’s Muammar, as in HELLFIRE MISSILE ACCIDENTALLY HITS MUAMMAR or MUAMMAR ACCIDENTALLY FALLS DOWN STAIRWELL WEARING NOOSE.

Now that we’ve settled this matter, we can move on to another nagging question provoked by the events in Libya:

If Muammar has been running the country for 42 years, why is he still a colonel?