Actually, a significant majority of Army personnel work in support positions! The Army is an almost entirely self-sufficient branch of service; there are MOSs for virtually any job you can think of which a mobile city of death might need, including plumbers, bridge-builders, and laundry-machine technicians. The Army also stations soldiers all around the globe, you're not just deployed in the desert the entire time - it is entirely possible to wind up in Germany, South Korea, or even Hawaii (there's a few jobs that pretty much guarantee you'll get to spend time in Hawaii, like the somewhat morbid 92M). What's more, as a woman, this young lady is unlikely to have been placed in an MOS that might reasonably expect to see combat! It is possible, but she'd have to really, really push for it: MPs, certain engineers, medics, truckers, Army air crew, and now six combat MOSs (mainly artillery). In fact, fewer than 0.75% of all female soldiers deployed (deployed, not just enlisted) since the start of the Afghanistan-OIF-OEF era have suffered injuries as the result of enemy action! Hajji can certainly *try* blowing chica up, but the US Army is the most lopsidedly efficient war-machine in human history, and the stats don't look too good for the dirkadirkas.

Well maybe she was just getting a job at ISIS smashing ancient art and archaeological artifacts.

okay thanks evil homer

You're very welcome, Ms Drew! I'm glad I could be helpful. I know that there are a lot of misconceptions about military life, and things like movies, video games, or yes even recruitment videos - which tend to either glamourize or downplay the daily struggles faced by our men and women in uniform, depending on the tone or the intended audience - these things are often a major source of misleading information.

I'm sure there are aspects of ISIS life that we do not hear much about, either. Like, ISIS isn't all riding in jeeps and blowing up priceless antiquities, I'm sure! For every ISIS suicide martyr that gets on TV, there are probably a half dozen bookkeepers, quartermasters, and chaplain's assistants, just hanging out in the sand and doing their jobs, safely away from our drones and Navy SEALs.

If you can't laugh at ISIS what can you laugh at? They're crazy, backwards, violent fanatics completely ripe for mockery.
Army recruitment ads are also worthy of mockery.

It's kind of the culture we live in now. Be funny, but don't offend anyone by making jokes about ethnicity or religion! But be funny! But don't make fun of awful things, either!

I'm kind of sick of hearing comedians forced to apologize for shit they say because it's their job to push the envelope.

I mean, I kind of shrugged at this skit and didn't really think it was all that great, but the response online of outrage is really stupid.

It's a poorly constructed joke because there's no reason for the dad to be reacting as he is (or the daughter, for that matter). A joke this shoddy could injure or even kill anyone in the vicinity when it collapses.

Impromptu fix to this joke that should hold until licensed comedy technicians can attend to it: the ISIS guys drive in a truck that has been crudely and unconvincingly touched up to say "crISIS - Committee to Return Iraq to Sane, Intelligent Sovereignty" and the scary guys are all wearing Dockers and polo shirts.

Yeah, sure, sorry Cena, maybe they should have been parodying a famous Coast Guard recruitment ad instead. Oh wait, there ARE no famous Coast Guard recruitment ads!

You're lucky the Army is there to protect you from ISIS, so you can keep doing your job, I dunno, protecting us from sharks or whatever.

I should thank The Army for that. I'd much rather deal with coke smugglers than ISIS.

The Army fucks up third world countries, so the CIA can come in and seed the area with coke barons, so the coke barons can send ships to get busted by you guys, thus giving us reason to go fuck up some more countries.

It's the Circle of Life.

Honestly, though, in a fight between ISIS and New SNL, I'd be rooting for ISIS. Boo! SNL, you guys suck!

In central Asia its all about those poppies.

In Central Asian fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...

The KKK was better than Isis. These motherfuckers must be destroyed and if there's jokes along the way, cool with me.

I suspect a lot of the outcry is because people can't make heads or tails of the joke. Is she running off to ISIS because she has a death wish? Is she just really really ignorant? Who should be offended and why?

Years ago -- early 2002 I think -- there was an SNL sketch where an official was talking about the successes of the new terrorist tip hotline and how helpful young men had informed the authorities about terrorists with names like "Hoosbn Farteen", "Ibn Farteen", "Yubn Farteen". Even in the grumpy post 9/11 world, people generally got that it was a joke about crank phone calls, because they set it up properly. This ISIS joke, though ... ? Not so much.

Perhaps it would have been funny if in the final shot, they'd cut to her getting run over by a bulldozer?

Sorry, sorry, too soon?

More like not soon enough.