Zimbabwean dictator and overall monster Robert Mugabe is one of the world's top bad guys. But if you're running an ad agency in Zimbabwe, hey, work is work. So a firm called Imago—owned by Young & Rubicam, the US ad giant—made a bunch of ads for Mugabe's "re-election" campaign. Now Y&R is falling over itself to cut its ties with Imago, possibly because Mugabe's wickedness has been front-page news in the US for the last week. The fun part: the ads sucked big time! Especially the one that looks like a wicked political acid trip. And we have the evidence:

Among Mugabe's new campaign ads is a television commercial showing the face of former UK prime minister Tony Blair morphing into the faces of US President George Bush, new UK leader Gordon Brown and, finally, MDC Morgan Tsvangirai, under the heading "The Losers Club" (sic).

A print ad says that "Tsvangirai's faction has a reputation for violence", another ad uses lyrics from Tupac's album Strictly for My Niggaz, and still another, attributed to [Imago head] Sharon Mugabe, asks: "What do the British and Americans want from Zimbabwe? Our minerals."

Ha, amateur. And here is the fabulous "Losers Club" spot:

[NYDN/ Times UK]