Sweet Celebration
It’s Death to America Day in the Islamic Republic of Iran or, as those happy fellows like to call themselves in Farsi, Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān.
DAD (the initials of the holiday, in case you’re still too bleary-eyed to get it) is celebrated every year on the anniversary of the takeover of the American embassy in Teheran and the subsequent holding of hostages for 444 days until Saint Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president in 1981. Old Ronnie owed his presidency to the revolutionaries who seized the embassy. The very act painted then-Prez Jimmy Carter as helpless in the face of world events. And then came the notorious clusterfuck rescue mission, with helicopters and cargo planes plowing into each other in East Iran’s Great Salt Desert. Carter took full responsibility for the fiasco and the electorate of this holy land was more than happy to dump it upon him. He could no more win the 1980 election than sneak into the embassy to rescue the hostages himself.
And The Winner Is….
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Anyway, I imagine parades up and down the Main Streets of hundreds of Iranian cities and towns, complete with guys dressed as mullahs on stilts, flag-wavers, streamers-throwers, soldiers in formation, and a military truck or two pulling a cannon.
Now that the USA and Iran are fi’nta sit down at the negotiating table to wrassle over the nuke question, it seems rather quaint that our erstwhile enemy wishes us dead, dead, dead.
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How should we respond to this less than neighborly display? Should we stage a Death to Iran Day? I know loads of bug-eyed wingnuts here would be thrilled to pieces with that but cooler heads realize it would hardly advance the cause of rapprochement.
Instead, I suggest a Sugar to Iran Day. Sure, why not? American farmers produce more high fructose corn syrup fixin’s than almost anything else. If there’s one thing the USA can make and export better than any other nation on Earth, it’s sweet treats. The brand names Coca-Cola, Snickers, Krispy Kreme, and Oreo are synonyms for America throughout much of the world.
Human beings are hard wired to dig sweet things. Anthropologists tell us this is because we spent hundreds of thousands of years searching for juicy, ripe fruits packed with energy-laden simple sugars. Now we don’t have to forage for fructose and glucose bombs; we need only jam Cinnabons into our faces.
In that sense, Iranians and Americans are alike.
Ergo, we should flood Iran with with all the sweetest, sugary-est, most decadent, insulin-spiking products our brilliant scientists and captains of industry can conjure up. Rather than drop explosive devices on the cities of Iran, we should discharge millions of Little Debbies on them.
Trust me, Iranian children — and, for that matter, adults — would love us for it! And isn’t that what we want? Love, love, love?
The countries that love us best are those that buy our goods most. We all know how addictive sugary treats are. Iran in short order could become a captive market of 77 million sweets junkies. Then they’d be our kind of folk.
True Love
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And like us, they’d become obese — better for us, should the upcoming negotiations break down and we find ourselves at war with Iran. In that case, we’d swiftly change the name of the operation from Sugar to Iran to Diabetes to Iran.
I have no idea why the Obama administration hasn’t reached out to me yet to join the State Department. Sigh.
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Democracy Inaction
So, WFHB has contacted one of the final three candidates for the job of General Manager and…, and…, and, well, nothing.
Man, it takes the College of Cardinals less time to choose a Pope. Folks, we’re looking for someone to run a community radio station not a Secretary General for the United Nations.
The problem with Firehouse Radio? Too many chefs.
I have it on reasonably good authority that Chad Carrothers, the GM emeritus, is not the choice. All I know is WFHB raised more dough during C-squared’s term than ever before in its history. So whomever of the remaining two is the anointed one had better be a world-beater.
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Don’t forget the Blue Jeans, Rock n’ Roll and Pornography; we’ll have ’em running down their country in no time! It worked for the USSR. I wonder if Ronaldus Maximus was behind that.
I know you’re in the smartass business, Mike, and I love that — but still.
In defense of the volunteer-run GM search process at WFHB, it has not happened quickly because WFHB is run by community volunteers. The cardinals picking the Pope drop everything. They have to be there. They have to get it done quickly. The process is part of their job — they are not volunteers. Nothing takes precedence over the completion of the task. This can be applied to a hiring process within a for-profit business, too — where people’s careers depend on fulfilling the Boss’ orders.
The Search Committee and the Board of Directors at WFHB all have demanding, more-than-full-time jobs that provide their paychecks, plus family commitments and often a band gig schedule to boot. I was on the Search Committee and I can tell you that getting a majority of us into one room for the first round of candidate interviews was a bear.
The Top Dog of a hierarchy can hand down an order and watch people jump. Processes dependent on civil group effort, on Volunteer Time, reaching for majority consensus, take longer. That is all.