These sorts of articles are usually amusing, and this one in the LA Times does not disappoint. Chock full of oversimplification, unclear as to the thesis, and unintentionally funny in several instances. Let's take a look:

The Americans are doing it again, mystifying the masses here with their weird, weird presidential elections.

The masses all over the world are still mystified from the results of 2004. Why should this year be any different?

To the Chinese, who are spared by the one-party communist system such complications as an electoral college and party caucuses, the spectacle unfolding in the United States is not a very tempting advertisement for democracy.

Judgmental much? Sarcasm really doesn't belong in a feature article like this — blogs do it better anyway.

"A lot of people think Western-style democracy is a joke — it's more like a pop idol contest or a beauty pageant," said Pan Xiaoli, an anchorwoman for International Channel Shanghai, an English-language TV station. "I think the Chinese watch with a sense of inherent superiority, saying, 'This is not the way for us.' "

Yeah, those smug Chinese, always saying how stupid the U.S. system of government is. How dare they judge us? That's just not right.  I mean, we would never tell them how to run their gov . . . uh . . . never mind.

Yet if the Chinese think the U.S. presidential campaign is chaotic and unseemly, there is good reason. Chinese coverage has not exactly highlighted the more flattering aspects of the American political process.

That's right, it's the media's fault! The Chinese people just haven't been exposed to the glories of the 2 1/2-year presidential election cycle. If they learned more, they'd be saying like, "Hey, sign me up for some of that!" By the way, the first image embedded in the article was of the front page of the South China Morning Post — not sure how that is relevant, given Hong Kong's system of government, but maybe I'm being too critical here.

Media bashing. Someone at the National desk at the LA Times must have carelessly left a copy of the McCain-Palin Talking Points over in the Times' International Department, and this is the result.

A photo that dominated the front page of Thursday's China Daily showed riot police wrestling a protester to the ground at the Republican National Convention. The headline "sex scandal" appeared in several newspapers on stories about the pregnancy of the 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Newspapers in Shanghai and Taiwan ran a nude photo purportedly of Palin that turned out to be a hoax.

How dare those newspapers run salacious stories like that! You'd never see that stuff in a U.S. paper, I'll tell you that. Well, actually I take that sarcasm back. You will in fact never see a picture of protesters being manhandled by the police in a U.S. paper — the editors are afraid that they'll be accused of being part of the "Great Liberal Establishment". Let's all pretend that there was no dissent in Denver or St. Paul — presents a great image to the rest of the world anyway.

As for nudity in the news? No way, gotta go to London for that. Everyone knows that Americans are afraid of boobies — tools of the devil.

But many Chinese appear to be less squeamish about sex than money.

I think that generalization is completely wrong, but we'll let that slide for the moment.

Though Beijing just spent $42 billion to stage the Olympics, the lavishness of the Republican and Democratic conventions struck observers here as wasteful.

"Some people think it is quite crazy spending so much money at a time that the economy is not in good shape. They think there must be a more efficient way of having an election," said Ding Xinghai, president of the Shanghai Institute of American Studies.

Not a nice way to bring up the Olympics, which I admit did include lots of spending on useless stuff. On the other hand, those new subways can still be used after the Games are over. On the other hand (if you have three hands), all those campaign ads (Olympic ones too) go right in the trash a week after they air. Nice expenditure.

Negative depictions of American politics were long a staple of Chinese propaganda. Shen Dingli, a professor of American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, remembers hearing as a student in the 1970s a reading of a Mark Twain parody of the electoral process called "Running for Governor."

"People think the capitalist way of campaigning is all about making up fake stories to slander your opponent, that it's just a political show," Shen said.

My goodness, those Chinese people are so cynical! How on earth did they get that crazy notion? They are so misguided, aren't they?

Making up fake stories and avoiding the issues, hmm, where have I heard that before? Oh, right:

Barack Obama accused John McCain's campaign of  "just making stuff up" during a campaign stop Friday near Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Obama was continuing his assault on McCan campaign manager Rick Davis who has been one of the Illinois senator's top targets since telling the Washington Post earlier this week that the campaing is "not about issues" but rather the "composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

Onward:

Another reason for the negativity is that many Chinese don't like either candidate.

Perhaps from nostalgia for her husband, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had been the clear favorite here.

Sen. Barack Obama has alienated some Chinese by criticizing Chinese-made products. And Sen. John McCain infuriated many more by meeting with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader who is reviled by the Chinese government.

Let's face it. Neither of these guys is trying too hard for the China vote, and I doubt that Sarah Palin could find China on a map.

"For ordinary Chinese observers, it is hard for them to differentiate between the platforms or understand the anxieties. They've seen it mostly as a competition between a woman, a black man and an old man," said Wang Jisi, dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, speaking at a seminar of journalists this week in Seoul.

Funny. I thought the election was between an America-hating Muslim radical and a senile, cranky Plutocrat. I gotta stop watching CNN.

"American election topics like abortion and homosexual marriage are alien to Chinese," he added.

Need I say it? Really? OK. If these "election topics" are priorities for Americans and alien to Chinese, then the Chinese may well be  better equipped to choose the next U.S. president than are Americans. (It hurt to say that.)

More alien than the issues is the process itself. The electoral college, the primaries, the convention delegates and the arcane disputes over butterfly ballots are utterly baffling.

Many people here have stopped following the U.S. campaign not because they are uninterested, but simply because they can't keep track of it all.

Yeah, it's too complicated and alien, like a cricket match. They should have tried, though. Perhaps everyone here in Beijing should have stopped watching so much damn Olympics coverage and brushed up on their U.S. politics. Lazy bastards.

Under the Chinese system, the National People's Congress votes to approve the presidential candidate selected by the Communist Party.

"Here in China, once somebody is chosen, he becomes president and that's it," said He Siyuan, 19, a student.

But not all agree.

"I wish we had some of those complications," said a 36-year-old man from Beijing, who did not wish to give his name.

"Maybe it is not so efficient, but the president is chosen by the people."

Except for that pesky electoral college thing. I guess the article got one thing right — no one really understands that "utterly baffling" process, not here and not in the U.S., particularly in L.A. I can personally attest to the fact that even something as simple as a toll booth can utterly baffle a typical Angeleno.