Ding dong, the shah is gone. However, more often than not it seems recently, we are subjected to another news report about the shah’s tourist activities as he proceeds on his vacation.

With events taking dramatic turns for the Iranian people, why must we be obliged to listen to the maudlin swill circulating about how tragic it is that this megalomaniac lost the Peacock throne? Commentators, assorted spokesmen and even an ex-president whimper about the departure of the shah. [Richard Nixon] It is truly beyond comprehension that anyone should feel saddened that this yo-yo lost his job.

In the years that he held his position over 100,000 assorted gripers, complainers, walking wounded and other generally dissatisfied types were tossed into jails, wherein their privates were poked with cattle prods, their fingernails were ripped out and the soles of their feet were beaten with rubber hoses (on and on and on, ad nauseum).

Over a thousand human beings have been murdered. A year ago in Qom approximately 300 demonstrators were liquidated and bulldozed into the local quicksand pool. Nor should we forget how a few months ago the doors to a theater were locked because some lackey of the shah’s thought there might be some unhappy people in the theater. The building “caught” fire and 600 died. Is it really any wonder that certain “extreme” elements have called for a public trial and subsequent imprisonment — and perhaps even death? [There is no proof the Shah had anything to do with the Rex Cinema tragedy]

Let’s not be too hard on this Charles Manson with a throne; after all, he was the King of Kings shining with all of God’s glory in the desert. We don’t want to kick the old boy around too much; the man was a chief of state and he is still received with dignity on his travels.

It seems that civilization has little or no trouble dealing with a Charles Manson. Police and attorneys general gather up all his cronies, put them on display and scoot them off to prison. The horde cries out that someone like Manson should be drawn and quartered instead of being supported for the rest of his life in some dank prison cell. But with a brutal king who also through his influence and orders had thousands of human beings murdered and tortured we feel pity as if he was Lou Gehrig leaving baseball. Yet a man like the shah is no better than Manson; if anything, he is a worse sampling of the human race. Manson is a kid stealing a Baby Ruth at the corner store compared to the criminality of a drelb like the shah.

A shah, though, can mask his revolting, vile and immoral behavior behind a Peacock throne, while a troglodyte like Manson must cower beneath a sink in a tumble-down shanty. Of course, too, the shah has a beautiful wife, limousines and a private jetliner. Manson, on the other hand, had to slink around in beat-up cars and he cohabited with women with such peculiar names as Squeaky.

There must be something in the human brain that tells us it is OK to grovel in front of a ninny like the shah, pondering the mighty deeds of such a murderer, but we shrink in fear and are revolted by the thought of a bearded acid-head screaming out of the night with a buck knife in his hand. We oogle and google at F4’s sizzling across the sky with flags on them and we calmly discuss over martinis the kill power of an Ingram M10 or the Mark I Hand-Firing device.

It is truly one of the mysteries of the breed that it can sit in awe at the maniacs who hold thrones and public office and be revolted at the petty criminals that stalk in our midst. It seems that until this contradiction in the thinking of people is resolved we will have to deal with both types of creatures. We will just have to shuffle the crooks of to cells and tuck in ex-shahs and ex-presidents in palatial mansions. One flops into the trash can of culture and the other suffers the terrible tragedy of being known in history as a bit of a rogue.

JOHN T. KENNEDY
Staff Writer