Thursday, June 23, 2005

Cowboy campaigning in Iran

Hear in your head the theme song for the old television shoe Ponderosa.

Now imagine instead of a cowboy, the Islamic fundamentalist: Ahmadinejad. That is what I will do the next time I hear the song.

Last night I watched AN's campaign film. There was something so attractive about it. Here is this unassuming man who lives the way many Iranians live: simply and unpretentiously. He makes it clear that he has not been corrupted by money. He portrays himself as a friend of the poor. He is an idealist. "Our culture has come so far from the culture of the revolution."

He's right.

Now he may be elected as president of Iran. A very professional, efficient, modern friend of ours called and claimed that she will vote for him. She will call back to tell us her reasons. What could they possibly be? The undeniable sex appeal of facism? Romance with socialism? A utopian world view? A desire for change? A passion for Islamic rule? Who the f*** knows?

Meanwhile…

Hashemi is portraying himself as the future of Iran. A poster portrays him looking down, without the turban that identifies him as a cleric. The text reads something like: Against terror and for freedom.

What will it be?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have been reading up on the Iranian internal politics and social matters recently.

First of all, I should say that I was amazed by the level of intelligence in the discussions in the Farsi writings here and there. Maturity is the word that fits here. They are easily up to the par with their western counterparts.

Second, I think I better retract some of my previous comments about the conspiracy theory. I was ignorant.

AN has a very good position. I can say, this seems to be a grassroot rebellion of the poor against the rich in a democractic manner. Ironically, voter turnout of the poor is usually higher than any other social group under the Islamic Republic.

AN will attarct a lot of the votes because he strikes a cord with the poor (vast majority of Iranians) who have become poorer under Rafsanjani and the reformers. To them, democracy and freedom of speech has little priority when they have hard time making the ends meet.

Anonymous said...

D'oh! Last comment was by me.

itchy_thoughts

Anonymous said...

Well, it's very confusing from out here.

Good luck to you all.

-- Tilli (Mojave Desert)

Kamran and Tori said...

IF there was any conspiracy, which I doubt, the conspiracy was to have AN run agains AHR. Every day last week, AHR looked more corrupt, while AN looked more sincere.

That's all Iran needs... a sincere idealist.

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