Don't Cry for Me, Argentina

It's early, but it's clear there's going to be a whole lot of horseshit about Benazir Bhutto and how her assassination is a tragedy, with the one light for a progressive Muslim state was extinguished in a hail of gunfire.

As Chuck D might say, "Don't believe the hype."

Or, as the O.D.B. might say -- were he not a martyred democrat in his own right -- "Bitch took my money!"

Indeed, bitch did take my money -- except by "my" I mean Pakistan's, and by "money" I mean hundreds of millions of dollars. US dollars. The real ones. While the NY Times might now be leading the charge in whitewashing her past here in the west -- the early obituary on their web site's front page describes her as an "charismatic and sly political operator" -- they also ran a story 8 years ago describing the $100M that was probably just the tip of the fucking iceberg. This would seem to lay bare the fact that Bhutto, like so many other Harvard-educated heads of illiberal states, was at best a secular kleptocrat. And, like so many other failed states, she was a kleptocrat that perpetuated the worst kind of inherited rule in a nominally democratic system.

Of course, everyone will be desperate to find some sort of good vs. evil storyline to make sense of the total clusterfuck that is Pakistan. The central conflict of assassin vs. assass...ee is straightforward enough; and since the assassin's a terrorist we're left with Bhutto as the hero. I would urge us all to remember that having boobs doesn't necessarily qualify you for sainthood.