President Obama’s response to this Huffington Post question about Iran seems sensible enough. Shame it’s marred by such a cringe-inducing and back-slapping set-up:

BO: “Since we are on Iran, I know that Nico Pitney is here from Huffington Post. Nico, I know that you – and all across the Internet – we’ve been seeing a lot of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?”

NP: “Yeah I did. But I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian. We solicited questions last night from people who were still courageous enough to be communicating online, and one of them wanted to ask you this … “

And we reckon Iranian democracy is a sham.