Sunday, December 11, 2011

"Message from Iran: Tell All Americans We Love Them" (LoonWatch)

LoonWatch is a website with a mission: to expose Islamophobia. A current post tries to combat the image of Iran promoted by the "corporate media":
Iran is portrayed in the Western media as a country run by fanatical, bloodthirsty Mullahs, ruling in concert with the often outrageous President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As for the Iranian people, angry mobs are often shown in the streets, burning American flags and shouting “Death to America!”

No wonder it is easy to convince Americans that Iranians are consumed by hatred . . .
The "fanatical, bloodthirsty Mullahs" are presented merely as a projection of "Western Media" and the only thing admitted to be "often outrageous" is Ahmadinjad himself--and not only that, we've transitioned to whole new topic: how ordinary Iranians feel about Americans. They "adore" them, we learn, and this post has the anecdotes to back up that generalization.

OK, but what about those Mullahs? What are they really like, anyway? We learn later
. . .the late Ayatollah Khomeini dubbed America the Great Satan, a term that has been co-opted ever since by Islamophobes determined to portray Iranian leaders as hateful and irrational.
Wait a minute--they aren't "hateful and irrational"? Pay no attention to all those loony and hostile articles at IRIB, ISNA, PressTV, Fars News, and Mehr News? Well, for some reason, we learn that Iranians hate their government anyway. But we shouldn't get carried away:
As much as Iranians despise their current regime and adore Americans on a personal level, they are united in the opposition to foreign intervention. If the US attacks Iran, Iranians will rally around the flag.
And how do the good folks at LoonWatch know this? All that appears necessary to establish the imperative of using nothing but diplomacy on Iran is a Nicholas Kristof editorial. Ah, I thought I saw that "friendly Iranian" meme somewhere before! The folks at LoonWatch appear to be very prolific. By the time you follow the link and look at the rest of this little masterpiece, it will be buried under a whole slew of new posts. Watch out, Loons of the world: you're being watched.

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