Episode Thirty-One: "All Those People Died in Iran Because President Obama Didn't Talk Tougher"

RHODA: Lindsey Graham says a monumental event is going on in Iran.

MARY: The President of the United States is supposed to lead the free world and swat the Mullahs' laser-pointer dot.

RHODA: What if the image of blissful social unification through consumption merely postpones President Obama's awareness of the actual divisions in Iran?

MARY: Until his next disillusionment with some particular commodity?

RHODA: The signs are in English, according to Lindsey Graham.

MARY: Lindsay Graham says President Obama is too timid and passive to condemn the fundamental nature of this evil Mullah dictatorship. How hard can it be to swat a laser-pointer dot, Rhoda?

RHODA: Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War by making it clear to the oppressed peoples behind the Iron Curtain -- and their Communistic overlords -- that we are on the side of happy harmony, surrounded by desolation and horror, at the calm center of misery.

MARY: He did it. Just like that.

RHODA: He went to the Berlin Wall and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, the mechanical accumulation of needs imposed by modern consumerism unleashes an unlimited artificiality which overpowers any living desire."

MARY: "Mr. Gorbachev, the cumulative power of this autonomous artificiality ends up falsifying all social life."

RHODA: Dana Rohrabacher says that if President Obama had talked tougher a few days ago, maybe we wouldn't see bloodshed on the streets of Tehran.

MARY: Sure, and if the President talked tough to Glenn Beck, then all those Pit Bulls would still be alive.

RHODA: If the President talked tougher, then the rank and febrile dogs who live upstairs wouldn't bark every time the fraudulence of the satisfactions offered by the system is exposed by the continual replacement of products and the general conditions of production.