Meet The Guardian’s Political Wet Dream

For some odd reason, one of the senior editors here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—let’s just call him “Chiip”—found himself perusing an old number of The Guardian Weekly. As its rather labored title makes clear, this is merely an assemblage of stories from the UK’s Guardian, the newspaper of choice for the sorts of left-leaning folks who love “the people” but detest people.

In the midst of his reading, “Chip” happened upon an interesting piece—an article called “Meet the West’s worst nightmare” by Jason Burke. Said article discusses Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran. What seemed particularly intriguing to “Chip” was that Mr. Burke appears quite fond of this Iranian nutter.

Sure, Mr. Burke called President Ahmadinejad “the West’s worst nightmare.” But, in Guardian land, that’s actually something of a compliment. After all, anything that makes George Bush and Tony Blair cringe is good in their book—even if it’s repressive fundamentalism, violent rhetoric, and vicious anti-Semitism. If W. and his bitch Tony don’t care for it, it simply has to be good. Q.E.D.

And indeed, the strangely fawning profile of President Ahmadinejad gloried in the man’s complete inability to act diplomatically. The piece commences with an example of Ahmadinejad’s disastrous obstinacy at the UN. As the caption under an accompanying photograph of Mr. Ahmadinejad puts it: “The West may not like it but Ahmadinejad says publicly what millions of people in Iran think privately.”

Now, let’s put to one side the fact that there is reason to doubt Mr. Burke knows of the private thoughts of millions of Iranians. We’ll presume for now that The Guardian has undertaken an expensive, exhaustive survey of Iranians’ innermost reflections, and thus Mr. Burke isn’t engaging in unfounded speculation.

Instead, let’s focus on what Don Henley would call the heart of the matter: Mr. Burke’s account of President Ahmadinejad clearly delights in the squirming of European foreign ministers who don’t know how to handle this brusque Iranian. Clearly, Mr. Burke perceives that Iran’s tough talk is admirable.

Interesting, isn’t it? For we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” seem to recall that another world leader is known for his tough talk and his administration is famous for its bluntness in dealing with the UN. Yet The Guardian, so enamored of the brusque Mr. Ahmadinejad, doesn’t seem to care for the brusque George Bush very much. And John Bolton? Forget about it.

How very odd. We suppose it isn’t really the bluntness The Guardian enjoys; it’s the message. And what card-carrying progressive wouldn’t love President Ahmadinejad’s brand of reactionary fascism?

Yet by far “Chip’s” favorite lines from the article were the following:

But one difficulty is that Ahmadinejad is not some “mad mullah.” He is a thoroughly modern man, married to a university lecturer.

Wow, there’s some proof for you: He’s married to a professor; he can’t be crazy.

Someone tell that to Noam Chomsky’s wife.