Posted on 04/17/2003 1:48:27 PM PDT by rhema
Forces scouring Baghdad's upscale neighborhoods have made a startling discovery: Saddam Hussein’s '60s-themed "love shack." Replete with shag carpets, bean bag chairs, mirrored bedrooms, sunken conversation pits, and airbrushed murals that would even make Vargas blush, the "romantic" hideaway is nastier than any set Mike Meyers could have dreamed up. Yeah, baaabeee! Saddam was one wild and craaazy guy!
Already the personal palace gomi of the Iraqi elite has revealed astonishing similarities between the real world of Saddam and the fictional world of Austin Powers. Watch the evening news and you will invariably catch a glimpse of super-villain flash that really might be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
What palaces, Saddam and his cronies built for themselves! They all look a bit like gaudy Tunica or Shreveport casino hotels—cheap plastic washbasins with gold faucets, disco ball chandeliers, and Home Depot standard stock hollow core doors. And to top it all off: check out the all the bric-a-brac of hubris therein. Apparently, Drakkar Noir was the cologne of choice for those suave Baath Party elites. K-Mart knock offs of Fredericks of Hollywood fashion ensembles seemed to predominate. Members of the inner-circle were also avid readers of Vanity Fair magazine—which makes for a horrid kind of logic. Well-thumbed Danielle Steele paperbacks also seem to turn up with frightening regularity. Saddam's luxurious yacht, with its secret underwater escape-hatch—though the mini-sub is mysteriously missing—is a very surreal touch of Hollywood glitz. Really! Sean Connery could never have imagined a 007 world as wildly kitschy as this.
Surprised? We probably shouldn’t be. The revelation of Saddam's pop culture tawdriness is all too apt. His regime's thin veneer of Vegas artificiality, Elvis flamboyance, Jacko ghastliness, and Charro profaneness all make for a kind of fierce consistency. Evil is always plastic, garish, artificial, sentimental, obscene, gaudy, grotesque, and vile. Think SNL or Letterman parodies. Think Dr. Evil.
Wickedness is absurd. It is invariably shallow; only righteousness is genuinely deep. It is invariably cheap; only virtue is genuinely rich. It is invariably tawdry; only goodness is genuinely beautiful; it is invariably mundane; only truth is genuinely profound.
Thus, the red light district palate of the Iraqi palaces, the suburban mall aesthetic of the public architecture, and the Disneyland character of the national monuments should not catch us off guard.
Lasciviousness is a masquerade. Perversity is a jester. Tyranny is a bully poser. A culture obsessed with worldly glory is necessarily a cartoon version of the real thing.
Saddam’s fallen empire of cheap trinkets and plaster opulence should remind us of the ridiculousness of sin. Iraq’s poor imitation of Dr. Evil’s imperial ambition thus affords us with a vital lesson. I pray we will take heed.
George Grant is the director of the King’s Meadow Study Center, coordinator of the Gileskirk Curriculum Project, and instructor at Franklin Classical School. He is the author of dozens books in the areas of history, biography, politics, literature, and social criticism and he has written hundreds of essays, articles, and columns.
When I started reading the article I thought he was referring to the Clinton Lie-brary...#8-)
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