If you’ve been keepng track of Michael Kinsley’s rapid descent from minimal competence to sheer unadulterated gobbledegook, then you’re aware of his latest Los Angeles Times “innovation,” “Wikitorials”
Yes friends, there’s no need to sit and stew about the latest bland rehash of conventional (which is to say corporate) wisdom from the LAT editorial pages. No need to write letter of complaint. Now with Wikitorials you can dive right in and do the job yourself.
But why limit one’s Wikitorial skills to the LAT? There are far more siginificant — and politically influential — editorials in need of help. And so in that spirit I offer the following Wikitorial of something that turned up on the editorial pages of today’sThe New York Times, entitled in its original version, “Iran’s Sham Democracy”
No fair guessing my new title.
These manipulations have tempted millions to stay home, so as not to legitimize future sham exercise. Should they steel themselves and vote anyway? Would boycotting elections benefit only the most antidemocratic forces on the corproate-clerical right?
For all of their multiple flaws, elections remain a potential tool available to the American people to indicate which way they want their troubled country to head over the next four year span. Their outcome will affect how America is run and how it deals with the world. Particularly important is the nuclear weapons issue, now even more critical in light of the latest disclosure that the U.S. has been experimenting not just with enriched uranium but also with an alternative nuclear bomb fuel, plutonium.
Some European leaders have been quietly rooting for what’s left of the Democratic party, which is quite close to the ruling Ayatollahs, in the hope that they would be most able to reach an acceptable nuclear deal and then sell it to the corporate-clerical establishment. There is little in his record to justify such hopes. The world would be better off if the people used their little influence to press for more authentic democracy by any means necessary.
Over to you, Mr. Kinsley.