Comic relief: Mad Mel Phlips on Obama, Freeman and Iran...

Mad Mel Phlips' Spectator column has been my daily chuckle corner for some time now and she never fails to exceed herself. Her latest piece would to an unsuspecting Martian sound like Melanie does have a(n albeit twisted) sense of humour, put perhaps altruistically to good use for Red Nose Day purposes.

Mel's most recent and deeply clownesque musings about Iran remind me a little of Edgar P. Jacobs' first Blake and Mortimer comic book which I devoured and adored when I was about 12: The Secret of the Swordfish. In it, an unsuspecting Free World is brutally attacked by Tibet (!), the Yellow Danger. The Lhasans had in complete secrecy developed a mighty nuclear arsenal which they put to the most evil of uses in a WW III-style Nazi bid to obtain world dominance. They bomb the nuclear bejezus out of just about everywhere, but needless to say, in the end the Good and Clever West develops an antidote to the Yellow Peril, in the form of a secret weapon (the Swordfish) and all is well that ends well. Capture, torture, escape and back in time for tea and medals...

Alas, in Mad Mel's version, there is no happy ending. From the end of her Comic Relief effort:

Thus the Obama administration is preparing the ground to throw Israel to the wolves of Iran. The dominant faction in DC has decided that a nuclear Iran is something America will have to live with; to live with it, America must do a deal with it; that deal will consist of Israel delivered to it bound and gagged, in exchange for which Iran will leave the US alone.

Except that of course it would not leave the US alone. On the contrary, an incinerated Israel would be the galvanic impetus for a nuclear Iran to seek to finish off both America and Europe. The criminal stupidity of this approach is therefore beyond comprehension. But then, ever since 9/11 important and influential people -- on both sides of the Atlantic – have been consumed by the belief that the root of the whole damned problem is Israel.

Such irrationality has its roots in unconscionable prejudice. Chas W Freeman was but a patch of froth floating on the surface of the sewage.

To believe all this, one has to assume that the foolish Ahmedinejad not only has evil powers but also a magic wand to be reckoned with, which he has put to the most evil use of effortlessly conjuring up the most powerful nuclear arsenal, with assorted ballistic missiles and second, third, fourth etc strike capability, to withstand residual counter-strikes from the nuclear rubble of the US, Europe and Nato in general.

Thank the Lawd that Freeman got Lobbied because he wouldn't have seen all of that coming, now would he, what with being in the pay of the Saudis, the Chinese and all the other Third World dangers, out to lord it over the Judeo-Christian First World.

Needless to add, the Mad Mellians that cheer on their hyper-Manichean hero see nothing comical in Phlips' Armageddon-by-Twelfth-Imam scenario, presumably because they don't exceed the mindset of a twelve year old and because Mel's 'first they came for the Jews' scenario has a vaguely familiar ring to it. At least she wasn't kidding when she wrote "such irrationality has its roots in unconscionable prejudice". You don't say, Melanie...

Enough sci-fi for one day, here's a bit of related analysis that does make some sense...