SHIAS AND SUNNIS FACE OFF IN WELL-CHOREOGRAPHED DANCE-STREET FIGHT

A heated but jazzy confrontation took place in Baghdad on Monday, when representatives of Iraq’s two strongest Muslim sects put down their guns and squared off in a flamboyant knife fight.

No injuries were reported, but the NY Times gave the encounter a glowing review. Meanwhile, anthropologist Beth Gilmore is trying to interpret the meaning of this spontaneous, ritualized combat. “The world thought it was rid of musical dance-fights, finally,” she said at a Tuesday press conference. “But we’ve been wrong about that before. West Side Story goes out of fashion, we all breathe a sigh of relief, and along comes Michael Jackson. My theory is that dance-fights represent a fixed quantity in the universe. You suppress it in one place and it pops up in another. We’ve all but eliminated it from pop music, so now it has sprung up in war-torn Iraq.”

A crowd of female and gay male spectators gathered around the spectacle, but was promptly dispersed by an American smart bomb.