Who knew that the Voice of America was part of some anti-patriotic liberal conspiracy? You might think the worldwide radio service, a holdover from the Cold War, still piped Yankee propaganda to the oppressed in remote parts of the world. Far from it, according to some critics. As the New York Times reports, some political refugees from Afghanistan have started referring to VOA as the Voice of Taliban.

Their beef? The VOA aired an interview with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader. The deeper problem, though, is that the radio service has tried to move beyond mere propaganda to provide something like objective, high-quality news reporting.

In early October, the Bush administration replaced VOA’s director with a more reliable conservative, but many right-wingers remain doubtful that he will bring the service on board with Operation Enduring Freedom. Objectivity, apparently, has no role in the psy-ops we have planned for the Middle East. The Times quoted Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, thus on VOA programming: “If we turn this into a PBS documentary—seesawing on every side and being balanced—that’s not promoting democracy.”

For all their well-documented courtesy to landlords, rental clerks and the like, the suicide hijackers were none too generous with a certain sort of service personnel. Just one look at Marwan Al-Shehhi was enough to know that he was cheap, maintains Samantha, a dancer at the Olympic Garden Topless Cabaret in Las Vegas.

“Some big-man terrorist, huh?” Samantha fumed to a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle. “He spent about $20 for a quick dance and didn’t tip more.”

“I’m glad he’s dead with the rest of them,” she added, “and I don’t like feeling something like that. But he wasn’t just a bad tipper—he killed people.”

Jihadsters buying lap dances in Vegas. Ironic, sure, but not exactly eccentric behavior, even for religious zealots. I mean, it’s nothing like, say, plunking down $50 to see Puppetry of the Penis, the two-man show currently running at the John Houseman Theater in New York. This spectacle features a couple of Australian gentleman bending and stretching their johnsons into various “installations”—or, as a reviewer for the New York Times put it, “into shapes more often associated with balloon animals.” The show is also playing to packed houses in Canada and Britain.