I caught part of an interview of Mike Wallace on the Sean Hannity show this afternoon. I didn't hear all of it, but evidently Wallace spent several weeks in Iran filming an interview with Ahmadinejad that's going to be aired sometime soon.
Three things particularly struck me on listening to Wallace's comments:
1. Wallace was absolutely starry-eyed, backstage rockstar groupie ecstatic to have been blessed with this interview, and have Ahmadinejad make such personable and familiar comments as "Why, I thought you had retired!" and "You're right, never retire, just keep right on working." Wallace clearly just lapped this stuff up with no sense of shame or skepticism or distance at all. He was soooo proud of himself for being THE Mike Wallace who interviewed THE Ahmadinejad that you could palpably sense he thought everyone listening must naturally be envious, and from his lofty prominence he commiserated with us all accordingly, sad that we could have been no part of it.
2. He was repeatedly emphatic that Ahmadinejad was a reasonable man, and that we in the West simply didn't understand him, his context, or his mode of self-expression. After spending a few weeks with the man, you do grow to understand him. Comments like "wiping Israel off the face of the earth" were just wholly rational euphemisms for relocating the "Zionist entity" to, say, Germany or Alaska. Further, the Iranian government was practically bursting at the seams with Jews whom Ahmadinejad has not wiped off the face of the earth, so how could he possibly be anti-semitic? I mean, how do you explain all these Jews in Iran happily living side-by-side with mullocrats if this anti-semitic, jew-hating riff he's been saddled with really held water? How do you explain it??? Non-dead Jews everywhere in Iran? HAPPY Jews, surrounded by happy Iranians?
3. Finally (and this is the key that made Wallace realize that he and Ahmadinejad are virtually twin souls), Ahmadinejad is such a reasonable and thoughtful statesman that he feels "sad" for President Bush, knowing that Bush's poll numbers are so low and that Bush must leave office soon knowing he is such an unpopular president (unlike Ahmadinejad himself, presumably, who does not suffer from low poll numbers or the necessity of leaving office simply because the Constitution eventually demands it). Ahmadinejad, the popularly elected president of Iran, actually and sensitively takes the time to note the troubles Bush is experiencing with his polls in the far off land of the United States of America, half a world away. You could tell this really touched a deep and responsive chord within Wallace, because he burbled on and on about how unpoplar Bush was and his low poll numbers and how he would have to leave office soon and how sad it was that he would be judged so poorly now and in the future and til the end of time...until Hannity finally interrupted by bringing the discussion back to Ahmadinejad.
Hearing all this, the first time for me in a context where Wallace himself was the interviewee and not the interviewer, just rammed home what groveling, pandering sycophants he and Rather and their ilk truly are. The idea that what they do is "speak truth to power" is nothing but a ludicrous, self-serving charade, and I don't have a shred of respect left for any of them. That generation of "newsmen" can't leave the scene fast enough as far as I'm concerned. |
