I'm a little late on the scene with this, but I had a good chuckle when I got my New Yorker in the mail last week, with a typically hilarious cover by Barry Blitt...


Blitt is hands-down my favorite New Yorker illustrator, and one of my favorite illustrators, period, not only for his distinctive style, but for his always spot-on sense of humor.  His New Yorker covers always deliver the goods.

Ahmadinejad's comments on homosexuals in Iran garnered belly laughs and boos during his speech at Columbia University, and though he claims to have been misquoted, his assertion that there are no gays in Iran (or "not so many as in the U.S.," as an aide says he said) has reaped a fair amount of well-deserved popular scorn.

SNL's Andy Samberg's R&B love song to Ahmadinejad was the broadcast media version of Blitt's New Yorker cover...


Of course the very idea that there are no homosexuals in Iran is absurd, which is why Ahmadinejad's statement garnered boisterous laughter from the crowd and gibes from the press.  But in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where mullahs are the ultimate authority and Shari'a is the ultimate law, persecution of homosexuals is certainly no laughing matter. Homosexual acts are punishable by death, and fifteen is the minimum age of the death penalty for them. There is no public discussion of homosexuality and no gay rights organizations are permitted to operate openly.

So when Ahmadinejad says "we don't have homosexuals, like in your country," he's not lying. A regime that calls for the execution of those who engage in consensual homosexual acts can reasonably make that claim. And hanging homosexuals is certainly one way to ensure there will be fewer self-identified homosexuals in your country than there are in America where consensual sex was recently legalized and gay marriage is a legitimate states' rights issue.

There is, in fact, no way for homosexuals to exist in Iran as they do in much of the West today.

But as true as the on-the-spot translation of Ahmadinejad's answer was, his amended statement (they exist, but "not so many as the U.S.") should not be brushed aside as an attempt to appear more progressive to western eyes. The fact is, in making sure the world knows he is not so foolish as to deny the existence of subversive sexualities (they are even harder to deny these days than the Holocaust), he's showing the world that he understands that a few homosexuals are always handy for a hard-line regime.

It gives you someone to hang on a slow day.