We can add obscenities if you want :) We do have cowsay integration though. (There are some questionable cowsay modes!)
That all being said, the thing missing here between any of these tools is most obviously the resource model -- and the templating system and where you put variables and things to manage variance between systems. Thus, it will blast out some commands for you, but that is the easiest part of the equation -- not too much different than say, doing something from Capistrano or Fabric.
Even in Ansible, that's the part we built first.
Achieving idempotence in shell scripts is the reason most people move away from shell scripts, and also ... well, the desire to program less :) Then you'll want the rolling update features, or provisioning, or dry run, or a way to pull inventory from cloud sources, or... and you'll streamroller a bit.
The balancing act for us is achieving the right level of features vs language complexity and keeping in that sweet spot.
I still think you should have an easy time getting started, see also things like http://galaxy.ansible.com for community roles to download to go faster -- most people should be able to do basic things in a few minutes. The script module in particular is a great way of pushing a f'n shell script :)
Except all the modules you don't use aren't getting in your way. I'd be totally for this as a simpler solution for simpler use cases, if it was actually easier than Ansible to get installed and set up. Since it's not, you're paying the same upfront cost that you'd pay for the more powerful tool, except you'll hit a wall if you try to expand it later.
