#2 It is hilarious, in the usual dark way, to behold the full panoply of stories being unrolled WRT the Iranian electoral farce. First there were the "horse-race" stories, complete with color pieces about youth involvement, use of pop-culture approaches to attract them, etc. Now we have disputes over "vote-rigging".
On January 30 I heard a major western news agency bureau chief in Baghdad solemnly (and absurdly) state that a turnout of less than 50% in that day's elections would impair the legitimacy of the enterprise. And now we witness extensive, sometimes lavish, coverage of the Iranian events by the MSM, all of it explicitly or implicitly respectful of the emperor's wonderful new wardrobe, hardly a hint that perhaps the whole thing is a hollow exercise. Astounding -- if it weren't commonplace by now.
As if to challenge me to unslacken my jaw and stop shaking my head, the other night CNN International had a typically self-serious and tsk-tsking piece on Microsoft's bowing to PRC pressure WRT web-search, etc. Imagine, a western corporation bowing to local censorship pressures -- even if the company's core mission wasn't about democracy or free expression. This, on CNN!
Hello! Can you say "Gaza"? How about "West Bank"? How about "Iraq, pre-Iraqi Freedom"? I've long since concluded that this level of unintentional self-parody and factual/moral inversion can only be explained by IQ levels, not merely extravagant bias, politicization, and lack of professionalism. Though all those are certainly on display, as well ...... |
The front-runner in Iran's presidential runoff sought to rally moderates Sunday by warning that his hard-line opponent would run a totalitarian regime.
Harvey Fierstein and Ayatollah Rafsanjani...separated at birth.