Life in Iran is a joke
Bookworm on May 18 2009 at 11:55 am | Filed under: Iran, Media matters
During the 1970s, in the era of the Jewish refusniks, this joke emerged from the Soviet Union:
Papa was able to get his family out of the Soviet Union, but he ended up staying behind, hoping for an opportunity to follow them. Until then, he promised he’d write. The code he used to keep the family abreast of live in the Soviet Union was a simple one. Don’t pay too much attention to the letter’s content. The real message would lie in the ink color. Papa would write his letter in red ink if things weren’t going well. Eventually, the family received a black ink letter from Papa, which read as follows:
My dear ones,
It is a shame that you had to leave our wonderful Soviet homeland to suffer in the West. Here, we have everything in abundance. Spacious homes, cars, clothes and more food than one could ever imagine. It is almost unbelievable that, in the midst of this land of plenty, we could actually be missing such a little thing as red ink.
As you know, I don’t usually tell jokes randomly. I’m telling this one because of Jonathan Tobin’s masterly attack on Roger Cohen’s rose-colored view of Iran, and especially of Jewish life in Iran — a view that readily qualifies him for this year’s Walter Duranty award. With regard to Cohen’s cheerful burbling about happy Jewish life in Iran, Tobin has this to say:
In “What Iran’s Jews Say,” published on February 23, he quoted a 61-year-old antiques dealer in Isfahan who leads the service at one of the remaining synagogues in the city as saying he was not worried about the chants of “Death to Israel” that “punctuate” Iranian culture. “‘Let them say ‘Death to Israel,’ he said,” Cohen related. “‘I’ve been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I’ve visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian.’”
Morris Motamed, who previously served as the token Jew allowed to sit in Iran’s toothless parliament, told Cohen that he was not a “Quisling.” While the “Death to Israel” chants “bothered” Motamed, he was just as bothered by the “double standards” that allowed other countries, including Israel, to have a nuclear bomb, but not Iran.
What Cohen did not write, though he admitted it in his Los Angeles talk, is that his interviews of Iranian Jews were conducted through a government-appointed translator and handler (Cohen does not speak Farsi) who he acknowledged would report to his masters in Tehran about both the journalist and those he met. Given the penalty for bucking the Islamist line about Israel for any Iranian, let alone a member of a despised minority, a less credulous journalist would not have taken the fruit of such interviews at face value. But Cohen not only reported the answers of his interlocutors as if they were a genuine reflection of Jewish opinion in Iran, he inflated them into a rationale for the Iran policy he wishes the United States to follow.
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I found the linked article disturbing in many respects, not the least of which was this passage…”Roger Cohen was born in London in 1955 and is a naturalized American citizen now living in New York”.
What? How did we ever manage to let such riff-raff into this country? Have we lost all sense of standards? It pains me to think that such an individual as Roger Cohen might have displaced a hard-working Mexican immigrant with strong family values who would have made a positive contribution to this country’s social fabric and GDP.
I found the entire article disturbing.
Mr. Cohen should have considered writing this article while working and living in Iran so that a jiyza tax could have been levied on each and every ‘red’ word.
All,
I wish I could say I am surprised.
I’m not. What is true here in the U.S. concerning freedom of the press and (generally) lack of retaliation is not true in many parts of the world. Inability to understand the cultural differences and political realities is all too typical.
Can you all understand why the military despises reporters for the most part? They don’t want to understand why we have them wear armor, stay close, and why we ask they don’t publish operational details that can endager their companions. They just know we “restrict” them. Then they publish stories when someone provides a “guide” and a government interpreter as if there were no restrictions at all.
Idiots. People who deal above-board and outline the limits beforehand are evil; those who actively decieve and curtail limits while lying about the veracity and openness of the process.
Critical thinking and analysis are sorely lacking in reporters today – and I have no hope in a better future.
Oh, well. Today is a cynical day, pardon my dark thoughts.
SSG Dave
“I’m going to lie to you – do you believe me?”
Once when I was abroad as an expat student in the heady 70s, my school had a class trip to Prague, then under communist domination. One of our students, beautiful bubble-head that she was, started stopping people and saying to them something to the effect, “what’s wrong with you, why do you accept this, why don’t you protest..?” or something.
That is when I realized that many of my fellow Americans lacked the imagination to understand what “police state” and “dictatorship” mean. I see that in my middle-class suburb today…people who cannot imagine (or don’t want to think about) the fact that they live in a very privileged bubble, a very fragile bubble that can disappear overnight. Methinks they will soon find out.
I imagine that my classmate probably became an MSM journalist.
Danny: I am reminded of a graduate course I took in the 1980s with an expat South African professor. He was talking about the foreign policy stances and alliances of various countries. He got to talking about his homeland. While other countries had allies, the professor stated, “South Africa stands alone.”
One “beautiful bubble-head,” and believe it or not she really was a BLONDE, asked the professor, “Why is that so?”
Professor’s reply: “Because of its internal policies.” Ripple of laughter through the classroom.
While some may consider that an evasive answer, my take on it is that the professor was saying to the student: “If you are 24 years old and have never heard about Apartheid, I am not going to take time from this class be the one to enlighten you.”
BTW, because I grew up with refugees from Hitler and from the Iron Curtain- a rather disproportionate amount considering how small my home town was- I had less of a problem relating to those stuck behind the Iron Curtain. Such as the neighbor born in Estonia, 8 years old when the Russkies took over then followed by the Nazis, who had difficulty being candid in discussions about politics and religion.