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Five brutal tyrants that the West can't help finding hilarious

Mike Pollitt | Tuesday 1 March, 2011 10:06

Brutal dictators are no laughing matter. Except when they are. From Hitler to Idi Amin, the West has a long tradition of finding humour in the most savage places. Does it demean the suffering of their victims, or display a healthy attitude towards men deserving of ridicule? You decide…

Colonel Gaddafi
The man of the moment. Vanity Fair goes to town with, it must be admitted, a very funny slideshow of his most outrageous outfits. Slide 1 has him “channelling Saturday Night Fever”, which gives you some idea of the flavour.

Hosni Mubarak
Google “Mubarak hair” and you get over 3m results. That’s about the man’s hair!! Who says our culture is superficial? Here is a nice take from the Beeb: “He is in his 80s now but his hair is dyed to a rich, deep shade of darkness and still gleams like a polished boot.”

Kim Jong Il
From Team America trying to prove that racism could be funny if you were willing to go with it, to “gone viral” tumblr blogs of him looking at things, Kim Jong Il has become a firm favourite of the satirical class. Just cos it’s hilarious, does that make it right? A moral quandary for our time.

Islam Karimov
There’s not too much laughing at Mr Karimov, after all there’s only so much comic mileage in boiling dissenters alive. But his daughter has received plenty of attention, not least for appearing in her own music video where, in the words of the Guardian she “cavorts in a cartoon wonderland where she travels to a secluded castle and a tropical island in a limousine that floats through the air.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
He’s doubtless not personally responsible for the whole “the Olympic logo spells out Zion” nonsense, but it’s probably fair to say the guy has set a tone of utter insanity which other members of the Iranian political class are seeking emulate. Here is a list of deeply unfunny jokes at his expense by David Letterman, Jay Leno, and other late night American talk show hosts – a veritable Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Comedy Roast in fact. If this is the best we can do, maybe we should give po-faced seriousness another try.

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