Thursday, June 30, 2005

Weird News of the Day



They may not look weird to you but they struck me as odd. Hollow or like deja vu all over again.

First, the newly elected president of Iran, a wingnut in full ripeness, may have met Americans in his past:

The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago.

President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions."

"As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN.

"...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser."

Abbas Abdi, the man well-known to be the leader of the 1979 hostage-takers, told CNN that Ahmadinejad, the Tehran mayor, "absolutely was not" part of the event that involved the captivity of 52 people.

Abdi later became a supporter of reformist President Mohammed Khatami and was recently released from jail for advocating closer ties with the United States.

Iranian officials also deny Ahmadinejad was involved.

Whatever the truth of the case, everybody knows that Ahmadinejad is as eager for a theocratic world as some other leader better to remain unnamed here.

Second, Bush spoke and the Americans...slept:

President Bush's latest address to the nation, urging Americans to stand firm in Iraq, drew the smallest TV audience of his tenure, Nielsen Media Research reported Wednesday.

Live coverage of Bush's half-hour speech Tuesday night from the Ft. Bragg military base in North Carolina averaged 23 million viewers combined on four major U.S. broadcast networks and three leading cable news channels, Nielsen said.

Designed largely to bolster sagging public support for the persistently bloody conflict in Iraq, the speech fell 8.6 million viewers shy of Bush's previous low as president, his August 9, 2001 address on stem cell research, which was carried on six networks.

I wouldn't be surprised if those 23 million viewers were of various wingnut stripes, except for us valiant bloggers, sitting there wrapped in tinfoil and wearing wading boots.

Speaking of sleep, did you know that insects sleep? So there wouldn't be much point in coming back as a fly: you'd fritter away those priceless hours in Sandyman's arms just like you do now.