Smokin' in the Boys' Room

News Item:

DENVER -- An envoy from Qatar who authorities said grabbed a surreptitious smoke in a jetliner's bathroom and then joked about lighting his shoe on fire, sparking a bomb scare and the scrambling of military jets, has been released from custody.

No explosives were found on the Washington-to-Denver flight. Authorities speaking on condition of anonymity said they don't think the envoy was trying to hurt anyone during Wednesday's scare and he will not be criminally charged.

Brown Lloyd James, a law firm representing the Qatar embassy, said Thursday morning that the diplomat, Mohammed Al-Madadi, had been released by authorities after questioning and was on his way back to Washington. The firm said Al-Madadi is the embassy's third secretary.

Say, Moe...listen. There is nothing worse than forced humor, with the possible exception of sticking cloves in a ham. And from what I heard today, you are on the way back home to Qatar. Causing a big commotion on an American jet plane and making a joke about it is not what we want to laugh at.

What we want to laugh at is a new episode of "Modern Family," but there wasn't one this week. Maybe Moh figured he would step up and fill the void with his knee-cracking side-splitter about making it look like he was trying to set off a shoe bomb while sucking the nicotine out of a Marlboro in a jetliner restroom.

A few years ago, Moh was probably the guy hanging around the ticket line and pretending to see a friend across the way, hollering, "Hi, Jack!" I tell you, that's a surefire laugh-getter.

He's also the kind of guy who asks tall people,"How's the weather up there?" and asks bald guys to wear a hat to cut down on the glare and says "What can I do you for?" and "Are you working hard, or hardly working?" and need I go on? Many of us know this guy, many of us work with him, and in some cases, people we know are so unlucky as to sleep one pillow away from him.

Music is the universal language. Dumb jokes are the universal tool of the middling intellect. I imagine old Moh is getting big yuks back home today as he spins the tale of engendering fear and panic over the American midwest.