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Old Ducker
04-22-2010, 03:42 PM
Thursday, March 25, 2010
By: Patrick Disney - Opinion

The Huffington Post - Since the hostage crisis in 1979, Iranian Americans have experienced the scorn and derision of bigots who reduce a proud and ancient heritage to the reprehensible actions of Iran's theocratic government.

As with anything in politics, there should be room for a lively debate about Christiane Amanpour's recent appointment to host ABC's This Week. Legitimate arguments can be made both for and against the decision to hire an acclaimed foreign correspondent to do a Sunday morning show that previously focused on domestic issues. And employees at ABC are well within their right to be miffed at the network's decision to pay top dollar for a star like Amanpour at the same time they are scaling back and laying off long-time employees.

But what cannot be countenanced is accusing her of bias based only on insinuations about her Iranian heritage. The attacks on Amanpour follow in a long line of Iranophobic attempts to keep qualified Iranian Americans out of the public sphere in America, and it should be called out for what it is: anti-Iranian bigotry.

As one of the most prominent and well-respected Americans of Iranian descent, the attacks on Amanpour are offensive to the entire Iranian-American community. Iranian Americans are proud of her accomplishments and her integrity, and have stepped up to defend her against attacks rooted in ignorance and bigotry.

Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales started this dust-up when he derided Amanpour as "the opposite of the perfect candidate" based on what he perceived as her lack of objectivity regarding Israel. As Glenn Greenwald and Adam Serwer have pointed out, Shales bolstered his claim with the supposedly incriminating evidence of Amanpour's Iranian heritage. For many in the Iranian-American community, this is all-too-familiar territory.

Since the hostage crisis in 1979, Iranian Americans have experienced the scorn and derision of bigots who reduce a proud and ancient heritage to the reprehensible actions of Iran's theocratic government. Despite this, Iranian Americans have distinguished the majority of Americans from this bigoted minority. No country has been more welcoming for Iranians fleeing Iran than the United States. Yet, making that same distinction - that is, separating Iranian Americans from the Iranian government - is something these small, vocal critics are incapable of doing.

There has been an ongoing campaign by these extremists to prevent Iranian Americans from partaking in America's public life. Martin Kramer, the controversial Harvard professor, warned about the dangers of allowing Iranian Americans to get too close to power during last year's AIPAC conference:

...Iran can have behind the scenes leverage over Iranian Americans, many of whom occupy key positions in the think tanks and are even being brought now into the administration...What this means is that we have to be extremely cautious about what we take away from Iranian diaspora communities when it comes to understanding Iran.

If Kramer and Shales had it their way, Iranian Americans would not be permitted to work on domestic issues because of their "international perspective," nor could they cover Iran because they are "untrustworthy" and "incapable of objectivity." In short, Kramer and Shales' end goal is to have Iranian Americans shut out of the picture entirely.

In their ideal world, Iranian Americans may be permitted to exist, but they should not be permitted to have a voice.

Fortunately, those seeking to engineer a sort of "moral panic" about the Iranian-American community have and will continue to fail. Their insults and accusations only marginalize their message.

Most Americans recognize that the Iranian-American community has enriched America in the cultural sphere, contributed significantly to our economy (e-Bay's founder, Pierre Omidyar, is an Iranian American), in the public sphere with talented journalists like Amanpour, and even in sports - both Andre Agassi and Ali Farokhmanesh (the dead-eyed Northern Iowa basketball star behind last week's upset against Kansas in the NCAA tournament) are children of Iranian national sports heroes.

Every once in a while, some discriminatory policy or legislation will pop up, or a hateful attack against the community will be aired. But episodes like the Amanpour story serve as a reminder that America is united with the Iranian-American community. We join together to combat the bigots who wish to silence and exclude this diverse and valued community. And I, for one, join my Iranian-American friends in celebrating Amanpour's success, and wish her the best of luck.


http://www.niacouncil.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6177&security=1&news_iv_ctrl=1102

My comment: The double standard being applied to Iranian-Americans regarding dual loyalty is breathtaking as opposed to American Jews with dual citizenship. One commentor nailed it:


Claiming Iranian-Americans have a dual loyalty is remarkably bad strategy on the part of Neocons. The vast majority of Iranian Americans are either refugees from the Islamic Republic or the children of those refugees. They voted against the mullahcracy with their feet. Jewish Americans like Goldfarb and Goldberg aren’t refugees from Israel and show their dual loyalty every day of their lives. Aren’t they concerned that this time they have given people the idea that their dual loyalty should be questioned?

Zippyjuan
04-22-2010, 03:50 PM
I wasn't aware of attacks on her for being Iranian. She is one of the better reporters of international news out there.

BlackTerrel
04-22-2010, 04:30 PM
She shouldn't be attacked because she is Iranian but I question whether this is a straw man argument to be built up only to be easily knocked down.

3 minutes ago I had never heard anyone attacking her because she is Iranian. Heck 3 minutes ago I did not know she was Iranian.

tekkierich
04-22-2010, 04:50 PM
I thought she was from Lebanon.

Chieftain1776
04-22-2010, 05:52 PM
She shouldn't be attacked because she is Iranian but I question whether this is a straw man argument to be built up only to be easily knocked down.

3 minutes ago I had never heard anyone attacking her because she is Iranian. Heck 3 minutes ago I did not know she was Iranian.

I don't know about this case with HuffPo as it interprets a quote a certain way. However Amanpour's objectivity has been attacked for being born Iranian.

Glenn Greenwald cites another example and makes the same point (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/23/bias):


Worse still is that, immediately after noting these charges of"anti-Israel" bias, Shales writes this:


Amanpour grew up in Great Britain and Iran. Her family fled Tehran in 1979 at the start of the Islamic revolution, when she was college age. She has steadfastly rejected claims about her objectivity, telling Leslie Stahl last year relative to her coverage of Iran: "I am not part of the current crop of opinion journalists or commentary journalists or feelings journalists. I strongly believe that I have to remain in the realm of fact."

Without having the courage to do so explicitly, Shales links (and even bolsters) charges of her "anti-Israel" bias to the fact that her father is Iranian and she grew up in Iran. He sandwiches that biographical information about Iran in between describing accusations against her of bias against Israel and her defensive insistence that she's capable of objectivity when reporting on the region.

So here we finally have a prominent journalist with a half-Persian background -- in an extremely homogenized media culture which steadfastly excludes from Middle Eastern coverage voices from that region -- and her national origin is immediately cited as a means of questioning her journalistic objectivity and even opposing her as a choice to host This Week (can someone from Iran with an Iranian father possibly be objective???). Could the double standard here be any more obvious or unpleasant?
...
UPDATE II: In 2008, Shales did something quite similar to Helen Thomas when criticizing a documentary about her career: "What's disappointing about Thomas, and troubling about the film, is her stridency in criticizing Israel and defending its enemies," Shales wrote. As "evidence," he cited then-Press Secretary Tony Snow's response to a question asked by Thomas challenging Bush administration policy -- "Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view" -- and Shales then wrote: "Not for nothing was Thomas recently hailed as 'the epitome of journalistic integrity for over 57 years' -- by the Arab American News." Apparently, being praised by an Arab-American newspaper is evidence of anti-Israel bias. Is being praised by a Jewish newspaper or group evidence of anti-Arab bias? Then, just as he did with Amanpour, Shales bizarrely linked Thomas' national origin to these biases: "Other than a passing reference to Thomas's parents as having been Syrian immigrants, the film never hints at Thomas's anti-Israeli rhetoric." Thomas is a life-long American citizen born in Kentucky; how is her having parents who are Syrian immigrants a "reference" to her supposedly "anti-Israel rhetoric"?

All of this does demonstrate that someone has a very severe, "troubling" bias when it comes to Israel, the Middle East and people of particular backgrounds. And it's not Amanpour or Thomas who have the problem.

1000-points-of-fright
04-22-2010, 07:43 PM
I don't doubt there may be some bigotry involved in this Amanpour situation. But the following quote from the article that is supposedly an example of anti-Iranian bigotry is more of an indictment of the regime than the character of Iranian-Americans.


...Iran can have behind the scenes leverage over Iranian Americans, many of whom occupy key positions in the think tanks and are even being brought now into the administration...

Does anyone doubt that the regime is capable of threatening the relatives of Iranian-Americans in positions of influence? Naturally, AIPAC has singled out Iran. But the same can be said about anyone that has relatives living in Venezuela, North Korea, or anywhere else.

james1906
04-22-2010, 08:18 PM
Iranian-American views on the current Iranian government closely parallel Cuban-American views on the current Cuban government. This makes as much sense as calling Marco Rubio a Castro sympathizer.