The interwebs are all a-Twitter about the Iranian election this past weekend. Ahmadinejad won, but there have been accusations of fraud and protesting in the streets of Tehran since the election. The people of Iran are calling BS on Ahmadinejad’s victory.
There seems to be a widespread belief that television news has completely dropped the ball on this issue. I don’t watch a lot of news on television, but I did see coverage of the Iranian election on Saturday afternoon on cable news while brunching at a restaurant. I also watched Meet the Press yesterday and Joe Biden was on the show to discuss the Iranian election. I’m not sure what previous coverage of world news made everyone think that cable news networks would cover this, but people are entitled to be angry. If you think that the television networks screwed the pooch, I suggest you stop watching. Hit them where it counts. Gut their ratings.
But, without any further ado, here’s some of the conversation that has been raging on the internet since the election.
Freddie over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen doesn’t think that the civil unrest in Iran will lead to any lasting change.
Over at Gawker, John Cook used a screenshot of the New York Times’ homepage to show that executive editor Bill Keller is out of touch with the state of things in Tehran. Keller co-wrote a story about Ahmadinejad’s uniting of power that appeared directly under a picture of civil unrest in the streets. Gawker also broke down the #CNNFAIL phenomenon for those who missed it.
Andrew Sullivan and TehranBureau claim to have been victims of Denial of Service attacks.
Award winning blogger, Michael Totten has done an excellent job covering the situation in Tehran. I can’t even begin to summarize his thoughts, but I suggest that if you click only one link to get a sense of the situation, click this one. Nico Pitney at HuffPo also did a great job. He liveblogged all yesterday and continues to update. What both Totten and Pitney did well was continue to update with reports from folks in Iran and reactions from all over the world.
The social media wizards over at Mashable came up with a guide to following the fallout with social media.
According to Andrew Sullivan, the reports of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s intentions to investigate the election are did not mean exactly what we thought they might.
Marty Peretz of the New Republic is not convinced that Ahmadinejad’s victory was rigged at all.
Jason Zengerle of The New Republic thinks that Robert Gibbs‘ response to questions about the protests make the opposition sound like upset soccer fans.
John Holbo wonders, assuming the election was rigged, why it was rigged so poorly? E.D. Kain at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen thinks that Iran’s status quo might have been thumbing its nose at us.
At the Weekly Standard, John McCormack is advising Obama to stand up for liberty if he still wants to be the Ronald Reagan of the left.
Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty wrote a piece for the Washington Post that asserts that the numbers over in Iran could totally be accurate based on polling numbers recorded last month.
Here’s an anonymous report from Iran at Salon.
The Wall Street Journal thinks Obama should stand with the protestors.
William Kristol told conservatives that the responsibility of a loyal opposition was to put forth ideas on how to handle the situation instead of preemptively trumpeting failure of the Obama administration.
An editorial at the National Review Online, said that Barack Obama “…has given the impression that he wants the dictatorship to stabilize itself so he can get back to the work of appeasing it.”
Finally, here’s a link to a flickr set that has some compelling photos of the demonstrations in Iran.
As usual, this is but a jumping off point. Feel free to post any other interesting links in the comments.
