Evil Leaders League, Week 4

Here is the Parade Magazine's World's Worst Dictators version of the Evil Leaders League, because (let's all say it together now) the worst dictators make the best evil leaders. Check out the official and, really, only Evil Leaders League site.

Obiang vs al-Assad
Like a big batch of diarrhea, Teodoro Obiang runs things in Equatorial Guinea. Like most African leaders in the 1990s, he acknowledged the world's shift toward democracy. Some leaders embraced the ideology all out. Obiang wasn't one of those. Instead, he embraced punishing anyone who dare lay a finger on his grasp of power. His preferred method of punishment was forcing victims to try and locate Equatorial Guinea on a map and then spell it correctly. Bashar al-Assad is the president of Syria. His government has seen warming relations with both the U.S. and Israel. His funding of terrorist organizations and ugly unwaxed unibrow keep him two spots ahead of Obiang on Parade's list, at 12th and 14th respectively.

To view the winner of each contest this week, check out the official Evil Leaders League site. Your mother would want you to. Unless your mother is Andrea Yates. Then she wants you to drown to your death.

Aliyev vs Shwe
Ilham Aliyev, who is the boss in Azerbaijan, didn't make the cut, mostly because no one at Parade could get close enough on spelling "Azerbaijan" for spellcheck to even provide a suggestion. Aliyev is the leader of an oil and gas laden country, who rules with an ironfist- literally, he's very germ-conscious. Than Shwe of Burma and Myanmar fell to 4th place. Two million people were left homeless because of last year's cyclone and subprime mortgage fiasco. Shwe dealt with the crises by passing a new constitution that declared, "Homeless people are not the government's problem. Get a job, losers." The Burmese constitution has a lot in common with the Republican Party platform.

Ahmadinejad vs al-Bashir
Iran's short sexy bearded leader is named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I love the way he spouts off crazy threats, makes Holocaust jokes, and mocks elections. He's my role model! And apparently, he's a good role model to have because he didn't make Parade's list. Probably because the real leader of Iran is the Supreme Ayatollah, and ELL Season 5 failure, Ali Khamenei. Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, the 2nd worst dictator, recently had to cancel a trip to Uganda. He hates paying extra fees for checking his bags. I can relate. Plus, he's wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide. I can't relate as much to that one.

Kim vs Chavez
Kim Jong-Il, who came in 3rd, leads North Korea until he dies. Kim spends his days lamenting his pancreatic cancer. Why him? And not one of the hundreds of thousands of little children locked up in his labor camps? The world can be so unfair. The Venezuelan president is Hugo Chavez. If you've followed the ELL, you know that Chavez never makes Parade's list because he's technically not a dictator. His country is a democracy. Granted, his country has elections like I talk to women. It occasionally happens, but it doesn't seem to go well. And the result's never fair. And someone usually ends up in jail.

standings: Check out the ELL site