Twitter, Republican, Iran, & Jon Stewart

Peter Kupfer — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:22:57 +0000

I feel like everytime I watch The Daily Show I come to the realization that everyone should watch this show in order to see the ridiculousness that exists in the world. He does such a nice job of pointing out the obvious contradictions of the worlds figures. (Of course, it helps to have a staff of people who must just watch C-Span, CNN, Fox News, etc… all day and tag and categorize everything that is said or done.) I feel bad basically just blogging about what Jon Stewart says, but they say that imitation is the must sincere form of flattery, so I guess that is what this is. I want to spread the word of the more hilarious stories he does.

So, on the June 18th episode of The Daily Show, Stewart reports to us how the house republicans are trying to compare what is happening in Iran to their own “oppression” in the house and they are both using Twitter to speak out. Here is one example of the ridiculousness:

Twitter / Pete Hoekstra: Iranian twitter activity s … via kwout

I guess I see the point he is trying to make, but sometimes we need to put issues in perspective. The people in Iran are using Twitter because they have no other outlet to the world since the Iranian government has shut down their access. The members of Congress can get on the news whenever they want. I don’t think that Mr. Hoekstra was trying to trivialize the situation in Iran, but it seems like he could choose his tweets more carefully.

But, it’s not just politicians! After a great post on The Nation regarding the use of social networking to report in Iran, this was the response of one reader:

Iran’s Twitter Revolution via kwout

Comments like this make me realize how out of touch with reality some people are. People like markhammel don’t understand what freedoms exist in this country that don’t exist in other countries. I guess there may still be some questions over the 2000 US election, but in reality the election was supervised closely and openly and when there was a dispute, a re-count took place and legal action was able to be followed all the way up to the Supreme Court; a democracy/republic in action! In Iran, hand written ballots were counted in less than a day and a winner was declared and there is no legal recourse.

Even if you feel like the 2000 US election was not handled properly, you should be able to see the difference. The people in Iran, can not protest and file law suits. They have to use technology to secretly stage and coordinate their protests against the government.

This site does a phenomenal job of summarizing some of the coverage via social networking. Below is the clip from The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

Irandecision 2009 – The Oppression of House Republicans

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Jason Jones in Iran

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Twitter, Republican, Iran, & Jon Stewart