I'm sitting here on my living room floor, remote in hand, flipping between CNN International, the BBC, Al-Jazeera and Grey's Anatomy--the last serving as fictional dramatic relief from the real-life trauma unfolding in Iran.
What is going on anyways?
And why is Christiane Amanpour in London and not Tehran?
CNN has, for lack of a better term, been sucking lately. BCC and Al-Jazeera are both quite a bit ahead of CNN in reporting breaking news, and actually have people on the ground reporting. CNN's on-the-ground team (sans Amanpour) are holed up in a hotel not reporting much of anything.
In any case, Iran's a mess. An inspiring and brave mess, but a mess nonetheless. Exactly 30 years after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, it's happening again. We think. Ayatollah Khamenai doesn't think so though, but I don't think he really knows what is going on. In his Friday sermon he claimed that it was over, that's it, Ahmedinejad is president, and y'all need to settle on down now. But that didn't seem to work.
Cries on the street have gone from calling for re-election to revolution. Opposition leader Mosavi has stated that he is prepared to be a martyr for the cause and is appearing in public to lead the now illegal protests.
This is big.
And two other points:
1. Why does a (very attractive) key human rights activist for Iran based in DC think she can appear on international television wearing a plunge-neck, sleeveless shirt? Does she realize that she just lost credibility with probably 75% of the people she is representing?
and
2. Why does the CNN London office have no one on hand fluent in Farsi? That scares me. Admitting live on TV that they can't translate the Twitter tweets they are receiving from Iran. C'mon. Not even 140 word-limited tweets?
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