Iran Turmoil –

Yeah. So?

Americans don’t know two central things about Iran:

(1.) What’s really happening and why.

(2.) Why we should care one way or the other.

The first is pretty straightforward. We don’t have an embassy there, and news reporting under the ayatollahs of the last 30 years has been problematical at best. However much we cite Twitter, or whichever “Iranian patriot” is on the internet, all we know is there’s large-scale political unrest.

Besides, our track record of political involvement in Iran isn’t stellar. We backed the Shah of Iran, and on New Year’s Eve in 1978, President Jimmy Carter said “Under the Shah’s brilliant leadership Iran is an island of stability in one of the most troublesome regions of the world. There is no other state figure whom I could appreciate and like more.”

There was one the Iranians could appreciate and like more, Ayatollah Khomeini. His Islamic fundamentalists deposed the ailing Shah and forced him into exile here. On November 4, 1979, the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized and 52 diplomats were taken hostage to endure 444 days of captivity horrible to them and humiliating to the United States.

A nasty stew of seized assets, charge and countercharge simmers yet.

Recently there was an Iranian election that may or may not have been more crooked than locally customary. Several Iranian factions seem to be seriously attempting to overthrow the current clutch of clerics and their boy Ahmadinejad, the current president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Because Americans tend to see revolutions as the freedom-loving people rising up to overthrow tyranny, they often miss it when people rise up to overthrow one tyranny in favor of another.

All of which is marginally more fascinating than a rain-soaked U.S. Open golf tourney, which leads us to the second question. Why should we care what’s going on in Iran?

Iran’s open and obvious pursuit of nuclear capability – weapons included – is an often-cited concern. We worry that if they develop nukes, they might use them, or give them to those who would. An Arab/Muslim reply to that might be “So why didn’t you worry the same way when Israel developed nukes – and if they can have them, why can’t we? And what about Pakistan? And North Korea?”

We don’t have a good reply.

Trade under sanctions certainly can’t be an issue. The feds say our 2008 imports from Iran amounted to almost $105 million, about three-quarters of that in rugs and artwork. Iranian oil doesn’t figure in the U.S. economy.

Iran forms the north coast of the Straits of Hormuz, the 40-mile-wide bottleneck through which a third of the world’s oil must pass, and there is concern that Iran might attempt to close it. The United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet would certainly enter that discussion, as would the other oil regimes who may be for the advance of Islam, but not at the expense of oil income.

Since Iran has no apparent intention of helping U.S. interests, and no real long-term possibility of seriously hurting them, someone must make a case for why the United States should care or attempt to influence what happens in Iran.

And if the case can’t be made – and it can’t – we should mind our own business. It would be a nice change of pace. Let’s hope we try it.

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Internet Tower of Babel

An informed citizenry is essential to democracy and so the world has learned that revolution simmers in Iran, a nuclear-armed North Korea plans dangerous provocations, and that employees of the City of Brooksville, FL, must wear underwear at work.

This wide-ranging view of the burning issues of our time comes hard on the heels of an earlier revelation, mainly that whatever his other talents and duties, President Obama is good at killing flies. Millions of us watched the videoclip of decisive presidential action in the face of airborne attack.

While there was no word from the White House on whether the late fly acted alone or was part of a larger effort, informed sources said that flies breaching the supposedly airtight security of the White House had become routine.

Nonetheless, President Obama’s summary execution of the fly drove reporters to buzz about PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) until PETA said in as low-key a way possible that it wished the fly still had its buzz and added it was sending the president a catch-and-release fly trap.

Getting back to the underlying information in the Brooksville story, the Tampa Bay Online website reports that enforcing the undies rule is up to supervisors who must be on the lookout for “unacceptable attire,” which includes "the observable lack of undergarments and exposed undergarments.”

Neither the Tampa Bay Online story or an Associated Press pickup that identified the Tampa Tribune’s website as the source of the story mentioned whether a Brooksville supervisor repeatedly staring at an employee’s private areas in an effort to determine whether they were wearing underwear could be accused of sexual harassment.

Research shows that direct action is no stranger to Brooksville. The city’s web site explains it was named for Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, who became so incensed when a senator from Massachusetts denounced a senator from South Carolina during an 1856 debate that he later used his cane to knock him senseless.

All of this information comes to me on the internet, of course, and it illustrates one of the challenges ahead as old-line media withers and dies – the internet has no editors.

The world today is just as screwy a place as it was twenty years ago, but the difference is that twenty years ago editors separated the stuff we needed to know from the stuff we probably didn’t want to know.

That doesn’t happen now, including at many of the old-media shops that still survive. Editing is out and marketing is in. Editing decides what information is important and relevant and what isn’t. Marketing merely matches information to perceived demand. Parents edit what their kids eat. Marketers only care that their product is eaten.

The result is that the ability to communicate is vastly outstripping the ability to sort and understand. It’s happened before. In Genesis, the result was a tower called Babel.

I wonder what we’ll call ours.

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