How Vogue Covers the Mideast CrisisS

Did you know that today is a "Day of Rage" across the Muslim world, where bone-weary citizens are finally taking to the streets against their corrupt dictators? Seems like as good a time as any for Vogue to publish a fawning profile of the "glamorous, young, and very chic" wife of Syria's brutal tyrant, right?

Asma al-Assad is "a rose in the desert," according to Vogue. She's the first lady of "the safest country in the Middle East." She's "breezy, conspiratorial, and fun," and she jets around the country in a Falcon 900. Her husband, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, is a "tall, long-necked, blue-eyed" man who "takes photographs and talks lovingly about his first computer." He was elected president in 2000 with "a startling 97 percent of the vote" because "in Syria, power is hereditary."

He has also filled "Syria's prisons...with political prisoners, journalists, and human rights activists" and presides over a secret police that "detain[s] people without arrest warrants and torture[s] with complete impunity." Oh wait, those last quotes weren't from Vogue, they were from Human Rights Watch. Anyway, isn't that purple shawl gorgeous?