The above cover is not from the latest Newsweek. The cover story is. At least with my version, I keep the deception visual. In Newsweek’s they add the blurb “What A Newsweek Journalist’s Captivity In Iran Reveals About A Dark And Divided Regime.” In my cover, I would be lying about the pretty blonde and the gun and the boat and the armed green-hooded cultist. With Newsweek, they’re only lying that anything of substance is ‘revealed’ about a dark and divided Iran, or anything else for that matter. It’s not even their journalist. By running this cover for the same story, I would be far less of a liar. And my cover is more interesting.
Before I go on, may I say that I am nowhere near as brave as Maziar Bahari, the journalist who wrote this piece. (Nor am I blaming him for the way Newsweek is deceptively playing it up.) If I were kidnapped by the Iranian government and even remotely threatened with any kind of physical harm, I would thoroughly implicate and inform on everyone I know. I would make stuff up until my interrogators were happy with me. I would appear on Iranian state television and confess to anything, denounce and defame whomever they told me to with zeal and every ounce of actor’s relish at my disposal. Mister Bahari your balls are much bigger than mine. I do not belong in the same species as you. Being beaten for 118 days is a crime and I in no way wish to diminish that. It’s wonderful that the guy is out and to whatever degree Newsweek is responsible for his release is indeed a credit to them.
Moreover, I do not believe that it is right for the government of Iran to kidnap and beat people. Even if they are Iranian citizens. Even if they are ‘licensed and approved’ by the Iranian Government to ‘commit journalism’ as it is known in the Iranian state. Mister Bahari is both. Which is where I start to have a problem with the way Newsweek was treating this. I know they did quite a bit to raise awareness of Bahari’s plight and perhaps feel entitled to cash in publicity wise, but Newsweek is way overplaying its hand, even by pulp magazine standards. Those are the only standards I am holding Newsweek to at this point.
Beyond the vacuous and deceptive cover blurb, the hype is further compounded by Pickle Nose Grecian Formula’s (editor Jon Meacham’s) Top of the Week letter. “This week’s cover is Maziar’s declaration of independence from the threats of a regime that imprisoned and tortured him for months… But it is something else as well: a rare glimpse inside the minds and motives of a regime riven with internal rivalries and driven by nuclear ambitions.” Wrong on both counts, oh gently graying one. I will deal with the torturer’s claims in a moment, but the man was a laughable, transparent boob. At no time does Maziar seem to actually believe him. And the torturer is about as far away from Iran’s nuclear cadre as I am. As for factions being riven, that’s a patent overstatement. If anything, from Maziar’s direct context, it seems like one side won, the other side lost and all of the riven is over. Only Maziar and Newsweek seem to buy into the unsubstantiated notion that there are clearer heads somewhere up the food chain. All of this is somewhat undercut, as only Newsweek can, by Meacham ratcheting up the hyperbole meter with his final line “read Maziar’s piece—and then imagine his captors with nuclear weapons.”
Like high school debaters they just have to drop nuclear weapons on the flow pad or it’s just not relevant. At one point in this framing piece they ask Maziar to speculate on what Iran would do with a nuclear weapon, as if he had the experience or expertise to know. Stupidly, Maziar comes up with something… pretty stupid. (I’m giving him a pass. He has an excuse. Newsweek doesn’t.) At one point Meacham goes on obliquely (and with bad form) “President Obama understands the complexities we face in Iran, and Maziar’s account provides fresh evidence for an observation of the president’s from last week.” The president’s observation, that Iran is snowing us in nuke talks, was neither illuminated by nor illuminating of Maziar’s experience. At first I thought that by ‘understand the complexities we face in Iran’ referred to Newsweek’s problems gathering information there. After all, the next direct reference is to Maziar, a reporter held by the Iranians. But no, instead it was some incoherent and completely off the topic compulsory Obama bung hole smooching. Sport of kings though that may be, there must have been a logical way to wedge it in. I have now gone from wondering if Meacham reads his own magazine to wondering if he reads his own column.
I for one cannot imagine Maziar’s captor with his hands competently on a television remote much less a nuclear football. His captor seems to be iffy on the mechanics of even hanging someone. At one point his captor threatens to hang Maziar by sitting him in a chair with a noose around his neck and kicking the chair away as he plunges through a trap door. Arguably, you place your victim in a chair to weight the body so that the neck snap is clean. If you kick away the chair above the trap door, you might as well not have the chair in the first place. Our captor also believes that New Jersey is an exotic place, apparently with its own form of Islam. Mostly, Maziar’s captor stinks. He does not bathe. The sole clue that Maziar has that this man is not the absolute crust on the bottom of the barrel is that his shoes do not have holes in them. We later find out that the captor is married. In both the eastern and western worlds the holes in a man’s work clothing will disappear slightly after matrimony. It is one of the unexplained mysteries of life.
Nor are his captor’s masters that high on the food chain. His captor is part of a feeder system supplying contestants to a broadcast of confessions by enemies of the regime. Despite his daily beatings, Maziar gives a performance rated as ‘a case study in saying nothing.’ Again, if I were in his place I am doing my best imitation of the Red Skull, implicating in detail all my friends and family and pets. Maziar is the son of a former political prisoner and wants to do as well as his dad did. There are no problems with his balls.
As for his story, it is an account of being beaten repeatedly by the stinking Mister Rosewater and taking solace between beatings in the words of Leonard Cohen. I am not making this up. He drops Cohen left and right. I like Leonard Cohen, but his lyrics occupy that stratum of meaning shared by those of the Moody Blues, Phil Collins, Yes, REM and, my favorite, America: images strung together with random verbs. It should be said that Maziar Bahari is a very young man. His work may have been better served by the Newsweek editorial staff. (The research on sea monsters can wait.)
By his own admission Maziar Bahari is an official licensed Iranian journalist. His claim to fame thus far was in making a documentary on the Holocaust, no mean feat for a person in his position. As an official journalist he is, at best, beneath the regime’s notice or, at worst, an unofficial spokesman for a faction. It seems his faction fell way out of favor and he got swept up with the rest them. In fact, he says his pals are in jail. If it wasn’t for some logically tangential relationship with the word ‘journalism’, Maziar Bahari is just another Iranian patronage worker in the klink. It doesn’t make his story less important than what it is—nuclear devices need not be added. Or we can accept the official version, that the Iranian regime truly believes that Newsweek is a part of the CIA. Not that Newsweek should feel that flattered, since they apparently think that the Daily Show is also part of our nation’s fine security apparatus. Take your pick.
I get it, however. The kid did his time. He got beat up. His gig is now officially over. By all means give him the cover spot. Make sure he gets a last fat paycheck and hope he can parley this into a book deal. Because chances are his next stop is as a gifted shoe salesman. That would be a shame. He told a compelling story which was entirely muffed by Newsweek’s presentation.
Also muffing it big time in this week’s issue was George Will, whose deadpan panorama of Pacific Presidents all in the service of the self evident cause of calling Obama a windbag proves beyond the shadow of doubt that not only has he run out of ideas, he has also forgotten how to write. And Garrison Keillor references do not make you hip, they prove that you are now too lazy to read. Get off the stage.
Cover blurbed was a lead for a book promotion agent’s wet dream of a feature on… drum roll please… wait for it… here comes the relevance express… Woodrow Wilson. Louisa Thomas rates a cover blurb for a book review? Check’s in the mail, baby. We call this advertorial. Let’s see you do a front page blurb on a book you pan. (As long as it’s not mine.)
But all was not lost, for I found a soul mate in music critic Seth Colter Walls. Mister Walls has discovered the great Lady Gaga of late. His verdict: “Inscribing Rilke’s question—must I write?—on your arm and then hiding behind a nihilist’s superficiality amounts to a pretentious form of bulls—t.” My new Newsweek pal!
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