Kevin Sullivan thinks Max Fisher's take on Iran's new hairstyle rules is misleading. This is correct:
I don't know that this idea - that Iran is a Pyongyang-style police state - meshes with the accounts of most respected Iran scholars or analysts who have spent significant amounts of time in the country. Private life is an incredibly precious thing there, something even this dreadful regime must handle (and regulate) with care. There's a sort of unspoken agreement that the regime can put the public face of its choosing up for window dressing, but an Iranian's home is his or her own, more or less. Of course people are monitored and bugged, but I don't know that Fisher can verify just how pervasive that activity really is beyond anecdotal accounts.
And Levi had to lose his, of course. The first of many surrenders ...