Grading Democracy on a Curve
Raging Moderate
Will Durst
Want to take this time to congratulate the Iranian people for upgrading to a participatory government where they feel empowered enough to take to the streets to complain. For those of you who have been too busy digging under bushes for returnable bottle deposits, there is major rioting going on in the country formerly known as Persia, due to their sneaking suspicion of rampant voter fraud. Hundreds of thousands are risking arrest, death and worse, demonstrating their shock at the corruption of their leaders. Of course, here in the US, we’ve learned to take that sort of thing in stride, and grade on a curve.
The election results in dispute find Members Only aficionado Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning the presidency with 63 percent of the vote. Well, there’s your problem right there. Mahmoud, baby. You want to rig an election, you don’t claim 63 percent. You squeak by with 51 percent. Didn’t you guys learn anything from Karl Rove? At least let the other guy appear to win his home district. After all, he’s not Al Gore.
In that knee-jerk manner as peculiar to totalitarian regimes as bikini waxing is to cast members of “Gossip Girl,” Iranian authorities blamed America for the unrest. That’s right. We’re responsible for their amateurish rigging of a phony election. They may have a point. In a way, it IS our fault. Re-repressing a populace after they’ve Twittered and Facebooked and Tranny Shacked is like trying to stuff the subjugation toothpaste back into the tube. Best way is to razor the nozzle off, cram the domination back in with a rubber spatula then staple the nozzle back onto the tube. Which is a bit unwieldy. But much easier when not exposed to the sun guns of the Western media.
