Gandalf-Jackson-Iran connection
Say what you will about the guys running Iran, but they
are indeed media savvy. How do you get thousands of people off the streets and
into the house and put an end to all these pesky demonstrations? Why, you
broadcast the most popular trilogy of all time on the TV. According to this
anonymous posting from someone in Tehran
in "Salon,"
one of the state television stations is offering marathon showings of "The Lord
of the Rings."
But Frodo and company have nothing on Jacko when it comes to
drowning out news or interest in the gruesome onslaught of oppression. And certainly poor Neda, the young
demonstrator who bled to death on YouTube and has become a rallying point for
Iranians disputing the election, has
been completely overshadowed by Michael Jackson's sudden demise. On Google for
the last 24 hours Jackson's
hits outnumber Neda's 47,900,000 to 378,000. The activity almost crashed the
whole damn internet.
And not just the internet has fallen victim
to the Jackson
tsunami. As Jonathan Rosenbaum points out in his blog, Jackson's
demise has pretty much short-circuited history, at least for the time being. Iran
who?
Ever the conspiracy theorists looking to implicate the Great
Satan, some Iranian spokespeople have suggested that the CIA was involved in
bumping off Neda. If I were of a paranoid turn of mind (which I am), I'd have
to ask myself, who would benefit most from bumping off Jackson?