or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
January 17, 2006
The Crazy Supporters of Crazies
We hear a lot lately about how Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "crazy." And for all I know he is.
What few people ask is: who are the Iranians who would support such a madman? And why?
I like to imagine Ahmadinejad has fans who are the Iranian version of Thomas Friedman. Friedman, you may recall, said this back in October, 2001:
"I was a critic of Rumsfeld before, but there's one thing ... that I do like about Rumsfeld. He's just a little bit crazy, OK? He's just a little bit crazy, and in this kind of war, they always count on being able to out-crazy us..."
I imagine an Iranian Thomas Friedman making similar remarks re Ahmadinejad to great laughter and approval at sophisticated Tehran dinner parties. Then I imagine putting the real Thomas Friedman next to him, so I could hit them both with one punch.
That's where the imagining stops, because the next step is to imagine a book by the Iranian Thomas Friedman about international economics, and that pain would be too great for any man.
Posted at January 17, 2006 09:58 PM | TrackBackAhmedinajad is a populist demagogue - reminds me a lot of Pat Buchanan and similar people. Feeds on people's fears and says what will provoke those fears. Feeds on the zero-sum type of nationalism. But also, he is not stupid, and the post you put up the other day explaining the Iranian side of things is a very good set of reasons for why he behaves this way and says things that shock Westerners.
The idea of an Iranian version of The Earth is Flat or whatever Friedman's latest opus is called, is indeed something to strike terror into the hearts of men/women. (Incidentally, the now dead mufti of Saudi Arabia, Bin Baz, once issued a fatwa that the Earth is flat.)
Posted by: Anna in Cairo at January 18, 2006 12:06 AMThe madman ethos in foreign policy goes back a long ways (Machaiavelli, perhaps, or even earlier?). Here's some useful info on how Kissinger advocated a "madman strategy of ambiguity, irrationality, uncertainty, unpredictability, or excessive force and ruthlessness as later practiced by Nixon":
http://hnn.us/articles/17183.html
But who knows where that turkey has been? You'd think Friedman would be sensible and advocate buying an inexpensive foreign turkey and quit bitching about his remembrance of lost Turkey.
Posted by: Jonathan Versen at January 18, 2006 02:27 PMNone of the "leaders" in this world are crazy, and everyone with two grey cells to rub together knows it. If they were truly crazy they never would be the leaders. The real powers (people, corps, mulluhs, whatever you want to stick here) behind all of our present crop of Silverbacks would never allow it.
Also, saying the piece o' crap Hitler,( or Stalin or Pol Pot, on and on) was crazy is a nice way to deflect responsiblity for his/their particular crimes from the people who LET him do his vodoo so they would benefit. Remember the winners write the history.
I heard some interesting variants on the "crazed leader" theory a few weeks ago in Germany (e.g. Hitler was a severely repressed gay man, he was vegetarian, etc.). These types of speculations have the added benefit of exculpating the people's part in the ascendancy to power of these nutty creeps (my characterization, not necessarily a clinical diagnosis).
Posted by: sk at January 18, 2006 09:30 PMI'd say they are crazy, ed, and their pupper masters too. Their goal is a total level of control. They seek to achieve it through constant murder and theft, even though cooperations strategies, when they try them, benefit them much more. The problem with cooperation is it benefits other people.
Posted by: J. Alva Scruggs at January 18, 2006 09:35 PM
