Adam Plowright

The Economist, in its “fighting back the tears” obituary for Khamenei, salivates with true depravity over Trump’s future death in grisly, if ecstatic, terms: “...when Mr. Trump’s body was ashes, eaten by worms and ants.” It makes the Washington Post and its infamous “Austere Islamic Scholar” obituary for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seem very quaint indeed. But I read the whole thing so you don’t have to. The key takeaways: 1. The USA is the Great Satan—no scare quotes. 2. For readers who don’t know what “Israel” is, the Economist helpfully translates it in parentheses as “the little Satan.” 3. Khamenei, otherwise known as “God’s Dictator,” had “divine right on his side” and had “countless reasons to hate the West,” which is an America-led “phalanx of morally corrupt countries.” 4. Khamenei was a sainted and humble man, dragged to power against his will, selfless and “heroically flexible” and unassailable—a “humble cleric from Mashhad who inherited the earth.” 5. Honourable in life, but perfect in death: what could be sweeter than delicious martyrdom? What could be “more deserving of paradise-to-come than to drink the pure draught of a martyr’s end”?! 6. According to the Economist, “Freedom, human rights, dress codes for women” are “tiresome Western tropes.” Yes, really. 7. All his troubles were economic: he was tormented by the West and by foreign enemies. All the crimes he ordered—beatings, killings, and so on—were, naturally, merely “a response” to those Western crimes. 8. He “rules by divine authority,” and “his tongue could channel God.” 9. He was just a ”mild-mannered cleric” gazed benignly from billboards and was a great teacher of forgiveness”. We have now surely reached the apogee of the decay of the legacy media in the West. Surely it can't sink lower than this?