Mahmoud Couldn’t Even Hurt a Fly
Not for want of trying
July 08, 2009
Here’s yet one more reason President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really ought to be more receptive to Barack Obama’s offer of bilateral conversation: as it turns out, the Iranian president could really use his U.S. counterpart’s advice on how to successfully swat and a kill interfering insects. Obama, as you’ll recall, displayed another of his superhero skills last month when he suavely and unflinchingly took out a winged irritant interrupting his conversation with a CNBC reporter. The beleaguered Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, was confronted by an enormous bug—an airborne cow, nearly—during a recent speech on Iranian state TV, and he couldn’t effectively get rid of the damned thing. (No doubt Mir Hossein Mousavi would have done better. Or so we’ll keep telling ourselves.)
Check out the Jerusalem Post’s video comparison, chilling titled “Flying Insects vs. World Leaders,” for an object lesson in the insecticidal advantages of democracy over theocracy.
Flying Insects vs. World Leaders [JPost]
Jesse Oxfeld, a former executive editor and publisher of Tablet Magazine, is a freelance theater critic. He was The New York Observer’s theater critic from 2009 to 2014.
