There probably could not be two print publications in America as
opposed to each other in political philosophy as the New York Times and the New
York Post. The first is what you might call Liberal; the second what you might
call Conservative. And yet, each of them ran an article on December 21, 2013
that clearly demonstrates how the deficiency in journalism from which they
suffer, contributes to the general degradation of the American culture.
The article in the Times has the title: “What Iranians Say
About 'the Great Satan'” and was written by Carol Giacomo. The article in the
Post has the title: “Obama and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year”
and was written by John Podhoretz. Clearly these are two different subjects,
yet the articles have one thing in common which is that they try to sound
interesting by going off line while describing the people they mention. Giacomo
talks about the Iranian people and goes off the line a little; Podhoretz talks about
President Obama and goes off the line a considerable distance.
When you read the Giacomo article, you cannot help but
recall what happened when Hamid Karzai was first introduced to America . Not
only was he billed as the great politician who will save Afghanistan , save America 's honor and save the human
race; he was also the best dressed man, the most fashionable politician whose
flowing robe was the envy of every American male. Look at him now, he is a
pariah that cannot do anything right. How could those journalists have been so
wrong?
The Karzai saga developed almost overnight because by the
time that he appeared on the scene, Afghanistan
was already on the side of the West, if not in America 's camp. But this is not the
case with Iran
at this moment, and so while exaggerating the character of the nation in one
respect, Giacomo finds herself forced to exaggerate it in the opposite respect
as well. In effect, she ends up describing an Iran that is suffering from a
national bipolar disorder.
You can see this at the start of the article as she
describes the old American embassy building “where they keep alive a paranoid
narrative of American malice and deceit.” She also describes an encounter she
had with three women at a prayer session. One woman was the mother of a soldier
that died in the war 20 years ago. The second was a security guard that
“delivered her version of the chant 'Death to America .'” As to the third woman,
she “smiled and rolled her eyes ... dismiss[ing] the guard's tirade.” But we're
not told why this woman was in that company to begin with, and the puzzling
thing about her is that people in that part of the world do not roll their eyes
– especially in front of a security guard.
Carol Giacomo goes on to discuss the reactions she received
in the three cities where she traveled for 10 days. She says the reactions
mirrored the current political posture of the country where “there is a
serious, even eager, interest in reconnecting with the West” but where the
Iranians still “struggle with three decades of poisoned relations.” This gives
her the opportunity to talk about the internal politics of the country,
mentioning that half of Iran 's
80 million population is under the age of 35. And that's where she sees fit to
report that “technology stores in Tehran
are jammed with the latest Apple laptops and iPhones.”
Finally, it was at another mosque, she says, that she met
with “two dozen male college students, all of them enthusiastic about speaking
to an American … express[ing] remarkable affinity for the country some still
call 'the Great Satan.'” It was an encounter with the two polar extremes of the
Iranian character again.
Having read all this, you ask yourself, is there anyone in
Iran that could not care less about politics because they are too busy making
breakfast for the kids, taking them to school, going to work, earning a living,
going to the market, buying grocery, coming home and cooking it for themselves
and for the kids? What do these people say – if there are any of them in Iran – when
they encounter a journalist from anywhere?
We now look at the John Podhoretz article. He begins it by
doing something that is quintessentially a Jewish habit, and that is spreading
throughout the American culture. It is that these people love to look at
someone and say to them: you're not as good as that other person. Well,
Podhoretz is not framing it exactly this way in this article, but he came up
with a novel version of the habit.
What he did is imagine President Obama singing “Auld Lang
Syne” this year and comparing himself with last year when he was having a
“glorious” time. Glorious, you say? You mean 2012 was a glorious year for
President Obama? Well, I'll be damned. It is just that you wouldn't know it if
you were alive at the time tracking the venomous propaganda that was dished out
by the likes of Podhoretz and company.
And this, my dear reader, should remind you of what happened
with Egypt .
For several decades these same characters denigrated that country by amassing a
huge army of journalists, pundits, explainers, pontificators, think tankers,
talking heads, charlatans, blabber mouths, farting mouths, their echo repeaters
and what have you, all of whom were programmed to pour rivers of hate designed
to make the skin of Americans crawl upon hearing the word Egypt.
But when the Egyptian people rose up against their own
leaders, kicked them out of office, and told the new leaders to get that flaky
thing they call America out
of their faces, all of a sudden the huge army of Jews and their gentile
followers in America began
to call Egypt
a staunch ally. What? A staunch ally? It looks like the mutilators of history
have a mutilated sense of morality as well.