“Supreme Guide” is the name given to the current head of Iran, a certain Ali Khamenei. “The highest and most powerful authority in the country”, we read, impressed, in the newspapers. This vocabulary used to qualify a leader seems straight out of a medieval tale. Others before him were decked out with honorary titles as stupid as they were ridiculous. Mohammed VI is the Commander of the Faithful; Bourguiba was the Supreme Combatant; Gaddafi, the Leader of the Revolution; Fidel Castro, the Lider maximo; Mao Zedong, the Great Helmsman; Ceausescu, the genius of the Carpathians or the Danube of thought; and Stalin, the Little Father of the Peoples. The further one moves away from democracy, the more the nicknames of the leaders become pretentious and megalomaniac.
So Iranians are governed by a Supreme Leader. What is a Supreme Leader? He’s a guy who’s spent his life in religious books, prayers, and jesting, and feels that gives him the right to command others. However, when you take the time to examine his small black eyes, Ali Khamenei’s face exudes more perversion than spirituality. In the 19th century, Europe painstakingly got rid of its tyrants, and we wish the Iranians success in doing the same with this old featherless fascist owl. How can one bear to be led by such an individual? I say “individual” to avoid sinking into rudeness.
Because even with tyrants like Khamenei, our upbringing keeps us from pouring out dumps of insults on his filthy mouth of unhealthy curette. Often, charlie has been insulted – even recently, he was called a “rag” by a famous MP – and we sometimes have scruples about lowering ourselves to put ourselves on the same level as our detractors. Cabu said that satire had to be creative and that, even if you wanted to qualify a character unfavorably, you had to be inventive.
How to interpret this impoverishment of the art of political insult?
We would almost come to admit that it was better before, because we must recognize that certain historical figures have graced us with small masterpieces of political invective. Napoleon said of Talleyrand that he was “shit in a silk stocking”and Gerald Ford’s Lyndon Johnson that it was “a good guy, but [qu’]he [avait] played too much football without a helmet”. To a Labor MP who criticized him for being drunk, Churchill replied: “Madam, you are ugly. But me, tomorrow, I won’t be drunk anymore. »
Unfortunately, in politics, the taste for the beautiful insult is lost, and we have to content ourselves with rather vulgar and low-end expressions, such as “eat your dead” or “get the hell out of it, poor cunt”. How to interpret this impoverishment of the art of political insult? Lack of literary culture and spirit of repartee? In wanting to be close to the people, politicians sometimes lower the debate to the level of commercial coffee by inveighing against themselves with the insults of drunk alcoholics. Is this how they imagine the people, that is to say too stupid to understand the second degree?
Irony disappears from political contests, whereas it can be an effective weapon. When, in Algiers, de Gaulle pronounced his famous “I understood you”, retrospectively, it is hilarious. Perhaps the most comical sentence in the whole history of France. To make fun of so many people live, without them realizing it, is great art and proof that with a little irony you can say anything in politics.
The communicators with whom politicians have surrounded themselves have stuffed their heads with elements of language that have sterilized the little creativity they had. Something has been lost that perhaps made people more interested in it, because humor in politics, even in the form of cruel expressions, is a proof of sincerity and authenticity. Precisely what the debate misses and probably increases public disinterest in it.
We should launch a contest on social networks: find the most beautiful insult to designate Ali Khamenei by another qualifier than his pretentious “Supreme Guide”. Be inventive, surprising and above all ruthless. The first to take a fatwa wins. •