How Can You Be So Right and So Wrong at the Same Time?

Upon perusing the Ace of Spades “weblog”—another fine product of MuNu genius—we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” came upon a rather curious report from Iran, which appears to specialize in curious reports these days. The San Francisco Chronicle notes that the country’s deranged nutter of a president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has officially outlawed “Western music from Iran’s radio and TV stations.”

According to the Chronicle, this amounts to the revival of “one of the harshest cultural decrees from the early days of [the] 1979 Islamic Revolution.” So far, dear reader, we are fully willing to believe that this is just another example of President Ahmadinejad’s status as an odious tyrant.

But the piece continues:

Songs such as George Michael’s “Careless Whisper,” Eric Clapton’s “Rush” and the Eagles’ “Hotel California” have regularly accompanied Iranian broadcasts, as do tunes by saxophonist Kenny G.

But the official IRAN Persian daily reported Monday that Ahmadinejad, as head of Iran’s Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling by the council to ban Western music.

Interestingly, the article does not mention a ban on, say, Dittersdorf symphonies, Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz album, or Irving Berlin tunes. That is to say, the report makes it appear as if this unhinged Holocaust-denying moron has simply banned George Michael, Eric Clapton, and Kenny G—the latter, we presume, because he’s Jewish, even if he’s produced a feculent Christmas album.

To be honest, dear reader, this has all left us a mite perplexed. Naturally, we don’t support the banning of all Western music: If you ask us, Iranians would be better served by dropping their instruments and working on their country’s GDP. And who would want to keep the Iranian public away from Western classical music and jazz?

In addition, we are certainly loath to cheer “Here, Here!” in regard to anything President Ahmadinejad does. This guy is so repellent he makes the typical Muslim dictator seem like Howard Dean.

But, come on: Who among the non-brain-dead wouldn’t want George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” obliterated from memory? Can a truly cosmopolitan free society tolerate Kenny G? We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” fully support an addendum to the Patriot Act that makes owning a Kenny G album a federal offense.

So, we guess what we mean to say here is that you shouldn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sure, the difference between the President of Iran and a bucket of garbage is the bucket. And, sure, he’s one of the most noxious figures in recent memory.

But, hey, he hates George Michael, which means that he can’t be all bad after all.