Random Acts of Writing: Following Iranian politics
By Craig Carter
Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:21 AM PDT
In case you hadn’t heard, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (I like to call him Rick) recently won re-election by a landslide margin. So all is root beer floats and satin underpants in the land of repressive government, nuclear aspirations and denial of the Holocaust.
Whoopsie, wait a minute. It seems all isn’t so well.
It seems Rick’s rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi (we’ll call him Mike), claims the vote isn’t what Ahmadinejad (Rick) is saying it is. Which caused young people to take to the streets in Iran, protesting against Ahmadinejad (Rick) and supporting Mousavi (Mike), while other Iranians took to the streets in support of Ahmadinejad (Rick), while denouncing Mousavi (Mike).
Just so you know, I have this fantasy that a columnist from some remote area of Iran is at this moment writing about Nancy Pelosi (whom he calls Azam) and Newt Gingrich (whom he calls Jamshid). Ignorance and jingoism are, after all, two-way streets.
Anyway, Ahmadinejad (Rick) is claiming the vote was fair and legitimate, while Mousavi (Mike) is claiming Iranians voted in vain, and the “landslide” claims of the Mullahs (The Backstreet Boys) and Ahmadinejad (Rick) are specious (what we here in the Treasure Valley like to call male bovine fecal matter).
At first, Ahmadinejad (Rick) characterized the protests as little more than the kind of sour grapes that come from losing a soccer match. Having played soccer a lot in college, I can tell you neither our supporters nor the players took our raw emotions to the streets after a loss or a victory. We took our raw emotions to the best place you can take raw emotions: the bar. However, Iranians are probably different, so take to the streets they did, and digress I have.
But meanwhile, back in the midst of suppression, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (in the interest of perspective, and because this is being written by a former Catholic schoolboy, we’ll refer to him as the principal of my Jesuit high school, Father Stewart, or “Stewie” for short), is concerned and is claiming all this unrest is designed to curtail his power or remove him as supreme leader. To which, I can only reply, “Um, Stewie, ya think?”
As this is being written, there’s no real solution in sight.
So we’ve all learned some lessons here. Most notable of which is if you’re the supreme leader of a theocracy, and you’re going to hold a sham of an election, it’s probably a good idea not to declare your hand-picked candidate the winner and proclaim his victory a “divine assessment” before all the paper ballots are counted. And if you’re going to forge the results, at least make it look like the contender had some kind of chance but just fell short. In other words, at least try to make it look good.
So, for those of you playing Iran Fantasy Election, here’s how it’s going so far. Iran’s 12-man “Guardian Council” has ordered a recount in certain areas of the country, such as, no doubt, Mousavi’s (Mike’s) hometown, which, ostensibly, Ahmadinejad (Rick) won by a large margin. A recount Ayatollah Khamenei (Stewie) instructed them to call for in the first place. (Remember what I said about at least trying to make it look good?)
Meanwhile, Khamenei’s (Stewie’s) rival amongst the Ayatollah clique, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri (a name that caused my spell-checker to suffer a nasty bout of irregularity, so we’ll call him Bob), issued a letter that included a rebuke against “declaring results that no one in their right mind can believe.”
All of which leads me to say to Democrats that are still upset over the 2000 election (besides, get over it already), you could have it a lot worse.
And that’s our moral. No matter how much your job may stink, you could be working for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Stewie Stinkypants).
Just think about it.
