I noticed this photo on the Yahoo! site, listed as one of the most frequently viewed and emailed. It’s interesting because at my workplace, the photo editor was struck by the strangeness of the photo, too, and called me over to look at it as something disgusting. He pointed out that the hackneyed peace symbolism, the dictator-pleasing dance concept, and the scary topic – nuclear uranium – all combined to create a surprisingly Orwellian image. The phony joy of the lobotomized culties just happens to match the ayatollahs’ announcement of “happy news” about Iran’s new uranium enrichment program. Kim Jong Il could not have done better. In fact, given the qualities of the picture, I wonder if it wasn’t some sort of signal to him as in ‘mission accomplished’ or some other bone thrown to him. It’s what he likes.

This tells us a lot about the kind of ayatollahs we are dealing with as this Iran uranium fiasco escalates and it doesn’t bode well for the future.

Eeew, what an icky photo!