Couple points. Theocrats and anti-Western fundamentalists can always make use of guys like Jackson, and/or Madonna, or/and Tom Cruise to argue the futility and degeneracy of free societies — look at what freakish celebrities *do* with their unfettered individualism, a Tehrani mullah might point out; you want this for Iran? And Joe Persia might feel compelled to say, well, obviously not.

But rich and powerful people everywhere engage in lunatic and self-indulgent behaviour, ya know; it’s just that in authoritarian societies they do so undetected. In the free Iran that is coming, tabloid reports on the unsavoury proclivities of religious chieftains and public officials will be *de rigeur*; and if the private lives of Arafat, Gadhafi and Saddam’s sons are any guide, Iran’s doomed strongmen will prove out three times wackier than any splotchy pop-star pederast.