Dole to visit Iran: dotting the i's

I have been trying to get a sense for the reaction to the proposed Elizabeth Dole’s visit to Iran for a couple of days now. The trip, as you may recall, is to be held “in abeyance,” pending clarification of something or other at the insistence of the Iranian regime.

The report is sure to add flame to the fiery speculations of the conspiracy minded here. I don’t have a satellite dish, so I can’t be certain about what those expatriates in California are thinking right about now. And unfortunately, I have succeeded in annoying my conspiratorial acquaintances so I am all in the dark here.

But seeing how the fortunes of the third world’s elite can wax or wane depending on how one’s cards are played, I am naturally willing to try my hand at it. In this day and age, as anyone can see, integrity is triflingly cheap. Who knows what a few strategically timed utterances and photos can get you in terms of $$$ and access to power!

So, let’s start with what we know. Elizabeth Dole, is to pay a visit to our country located somewhere in the Middle East. Obvious question: why send someone of such high profile? Why not an apparatchik at the State Dept. or some executive of some aids agency?

Let us just pore over what we know about Elizabeth. We know she is a formidable Republican and a serious activist in her own right. But that can’t be it. Middle Easterners, obviously as anyone knows, have no respect for woman. None of us here have sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, wives, intellectual companions, fellow artists, lawyers, political activists or any such kind of outstanding figures we look up to constantly! So that is going to go well over our heads! Hence we must look for patterns and commonalities elsewhere--something we can infer a message from.

So, let’s mull over the matter. She is married to the affable and wittier-by-day Senator Bob Dole, and this Gentleman has been involved in a crusade of sorts for some years now. Additionally, we know that as a Republican, she is bound to be affiliated with those intrepid desk top warriors at the premier Conservative Journal of our planet.

We understand that those intellectual gurus-- the sort of profound thinkers who have this bizarre belief in freedom as an attribute of the thing you dip in Ketchup --spearheading the campaign to liberate us from our misery at the point of a gun have a certain preoccupation with the … the… the ‘i’ word in this region. Frankly, I can’t quite say it out loud, but I’ll try one more time…O.K. you guessed it: it is an obsession with the dreadful “impotence” in this region. Things suddenly look clear as a daylight.

So you see, unlike what some pundits might be thinking, this is not a detent in the making at all. Chiefly because the Republicans and the Islamic Fundamentalists never make a deal with one another.

Quite the contrary, the visit, as is plain for everyone to see, is only intended to communicate a secret message to us, the “long-suffering” people of Iran. The visit is simply an attempt at exhorting us to act--to encourage us to change our collective lives, to improve our lot and to alter our condition. It is a message for us to become the sort of virile citizen our friends in the Western Democracies could be proud to embrace. Perhaps, this is why the initiative was so quickly rejected by those ever vigilant and crafty Mullahs.

And just in case you are thinking of a particularly unkind repartee, let me remind you that at best you might succeed in embarrassing me and many a wonderful things are known to have followed a timely blush