The news media has marked the approach of a significant anniversary – that of Iran’s revolution, and it should come as no surprise to anyone who bothers to read this blog that they are leaving a lot out of the story. My main source on this is NPR, and while I don’t set out to single them out (as a news organization, they’re better than some, worse than others), they do have a remarkable capacity, by and large, to hew to the center of political and economic power in the United States. Their perception seems generally representative of that of the current administration at any given time.
Anyway, there was the usual stories about boys choirs singing “Death to America!”, the “Down with Israel” chants, etc. (Probably could hear that in Times Square if you listen hard enough.) One report I heard on NPR’s Morning Edition on the 35th anniversary celebration in Teheran made passing mention of the eight-year Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s. Here’s an excerpt:
INSKEEP: Although we should remember this 35th anniversary marks the overthrow of a ruler who was supported by the United States and who was regarded by many as very repressive.
KENYON: That’s right. Again, they see that as an official government policy, not something necessarily being generated by the American people. So they do make that distinction. And this holiday is important across the country partly because of people who want to support the Islamic revolution and also because it was followed by a long and bloody war with Iraq. And many people simply turn out on February 11 to remember the young people who gave their lives in that cause.
Given the context, you’d think it might be worth mentioning our role in that “long and bloody war”. For those who don’t recall, we – the Reagan administration, that is – sided with Saddam Hussein, providing him with substantial economic and logistical assistance, treating him as a top-shelf client, even allowing him to get away with shooting up the U.S.S. Stark during the tanker war phase late in the conflict. If Inskeep and Kenyon think that honoring the dead from the Iran – Iraq war takes people’s minds off of America, they’re smoking crack.
I don’t want to be unfair, but seriously – if reporters don’t know or acknowledge history, we are bound to repeat the bad parts again and again.
luv u,
jp
Song: Paradise
Yes, you read that right. We got a bull’s eye on Ceres, the big brass buckle of the asteroid belt. I’m beginning to understand what’s happening here. Our rented space vehicle has a very primitive voice-activated computer guidance system, a bit like the blue tooth set in my car. When I tell my blue tooth, “call Oscar,” it starts dialing the number of someone in Madagascar. Well, we told our guidance system to take us to Sirius, and it took us to freaking Ceres. Christ on a bike!
someone you could describe as disappointed in the president: he is very much the kind of leader I expected him to be following his 2008 election. Probably the most prescient look at the then-early Obama presidency in 2009 was published in Harper‘s under the title 
I wouldn’t say this news was received with a total lack of enthusiasm. Anti-Lincoln was just dying to get out there and take a dip in one of the nearby liquid methane pools. And for sFshzenKlyrn, the guitarist from Zenon, this sounds like a tropical paradise. There are some issues, however, should we be asked to do an outdoor concert. First, my Kork SV-1 would probably melt at 104C. Second, the helium in the atmosphere would make us all sing like those munchkin dudes from the lollipop gym. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) And if we are contracted to play again next year, that’s just 23 days from now.
What irks me, though, is the legitimization of truly extremist right-wing notions of governance (or lack of same) through what I’m sure NPR and other networks consider “balance coverage”. A brief example: yesterday there was a 
Always a favorite of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, who would very much like to name a continent after himself, particularly if said continent was the result of an experiment gone horribly right.
after the 1967 war when he pacified Gaza by destroying thousands of homes. While Sharon is hailed as a hero of the 1973 war – a war resulting from the stalemate policy encouraged by super-genius Henry Kissinger – he is probably best remembered for his role in the murderous 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in the midst of that country’s civil war, culminating in the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli-allied Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, then under the control of the IDF.