Just when you think the United Nations couldn’t sink any lower in the estimation of rational, sober minded people everywhere they go and open an east coast affiliate of The Comedy Store smack dab in the middle of Turtle Bay.

Six nations with poor human rights records were among those elected to the new Human Rights Council on Tuesday, although notorious violators that had belonged to the predecessor Human Rights Commission did not succeed in winning places in the new group.

China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, countries cited by human rights groups as not deserving membership, were among the 47 nations elected to the council. But in a move hailed by the same groups, both Iran and Venezuela failed to attract the needed votes.

Now I’m all for having a good laugh. But I think creating a showcase for low comedy at an ostensibly serious venue like the UN is just unconscionable. After all, the UN does very serious work. It takes a lot of time and effort to make a hash of all the hot spots around the world. I mean, how many hours of heroic effort went into thinking up the idea for UN Peacekeepers to get out of their Robin’s egg blue vehicles and drive around in pink Cadillacs, all the better to ply their trade as internationally sanctioned pimps?

Or what about playing footsie for more than a decade with a homicidal lunatic like Saddam Hussein? And whoever thought up the one about disguising Kofi Anan as an honest, effective, upstanding diplomat instead of the money grubbing, corrupt incompetent boob that he truly is deserves some kind of award – probably fashioned in the form of those oil for food leases so generously doled out by Saddam prior to his ouster?

And I also would like to take issue with the name of this new comedy club. “Human Rights Council” just doesn’t do it for me. There’s no pizazz, no sex in that moniker. Now if you were to call it “Fidel’s House of Laughs” or “Vladimir’s Basement Comedy Club and Torture Chamber” - that might pique my interest a little.

I’d also like to point out that there are a couple of others whose auditions were spectacular and didn’t make the final cut. I think an investigation is in order to find out why Mahmoud and Hugo were left off the final roster of performers. Should we blame this guy?

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said: “The good news is that we did better than expected in the voting because Iran and Venezuela both lost. Venezuela’s losing shows that bluster and anti-Americanism isn’t enough to get elected.”

Nations running for the council had to meet more demanding standards than in the past.

Actually, I kind of want to see old Kenneth get a shot at stand-up. That joke about why Mahmoud and Hugo lost because it “isn’t enough” to be an America hater is a real knee slapper. Isn’t it some kind of admission that even though it’s “not enough” to be anti-American, it sure as hell helps if you are? Jeeezuz!

As for those “more demanding standards,” I guess the world can live with them if the UN can. Then again, talking to democracy advocates in Azerbaijan to get their opinion of these new “standards” may prove difficult because if they’re not rotting in some jail where visits from nice, clean, neat UN bureaucratic toadies are frowned upon as much as the inmate’s supposed “crimes,” then they’re in a graveyard which would make asking their opinion of anything problematic to say the least.

The UN is not a place for serious people. And anyone who proposes that the United States in any way curtail its efforts to stand up for what it believes to be its national interests just so that this corrupt gang of lying, weaselly, kleptocratic hypocrites won’t wag their fingers at us and tell us how beastly we are deserves either electoral oblivion or the scorn and outrage of their fellow citizens.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has lots ‘o’ links and stuff including this from an reader:

China, Russia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia. what else do you notice? Both Russia and Saudi Arabia’s heads of states have been to GW’s Crawford Ranch (though i dont recall if President Bush also held hands and smooched Putin), an honor bestowed on few world leaders. Pakistan’s Musharraf is routinely praised by Bush despite his non-democratic/military government. probably has his own room in the White House. And China, well with the latest criticism of Taiwan, Bush’s kisisng up to the Asian giant needs no further explaining.

The reader goes on to say that we have no right to criticize the UN since we cozy up to these thugs.

I’m one who actually thought that Bush’s second inaugural speech where he talked about a change in American policy toward the dictators and thugs who run countries that are allied to us, was one of the most decent impulses in American foreign policy since the end of World War II. The fact that his Administration has failed miserably to turn that talk into action is one of the great disappointments many of us on the right feel toward the President.

Still, the criticism of the new members on the Council is valid. The United States government is not the UN Human Rights Council. If the UN were serious about promoting human rights, they would place representatives on that Council that were actually in favor of the general idea. As it is, the best representatives for all of those countries named above are in jail or executed. The government boot lickers who we will get as representatives instead deserve our scorn and disapprobation.

Ed Morrissey ties in the Human Rights Council idiocy with “ethical standards” for businesses:

If the farcical selection of the guardians of human rights doesn’t make people laugh out loud at Turtle Bay, then its new push for “moral investment” will. The UN has drawn up a set of principles for businesses to model if they want to have the moral imprimatur of the UN with which to attract investors. It sounds reasonable in principle, but as a result, entire industries get locked out of the UN’s good graces.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out which industries Ed is talking about.

A.M. Mora y Leon also has a superior take on the choices for the new Council.