the attaché's O.N.A.N.: Subsidized Time as vulgar geopolitical export
The legation finds the promotional subsidy of the North American calendar hilariously vulgar. To say nothing of the arresting image of the idolatrous West’s most famous and self-congratulating idol, the colossal Libertine Statue, wearing some type of enormous adult-design diaper, a hilariously apposite image popular in the news photos of so many international journals.
Context
Subsidized Time seen from outside the republic that sells it, and from outside the whole O.N.A.N. sphere: the revenue scheme that renames the year after a corporation reads, to petro-Arab eyes, as pure vulgarity, and the diapered Statue of Liberty is the one image that makes the joke visible worldwide. The theme's founding move — the state monetizing its own calendar and its own central symbol — lands hardest here precisely because the observer has no stake in it and simply finds it "hilariously vulgar," the political self-abasement legible as a news-photo gag in "so many international journals."