Recent Newsweek reports are becoming funny

Reports by at least two Newsweek reporters who have visited Tehran, Iran recently make many want to laugh at the reporters. How naïve, or prejudiced, or egotistical they come across as reporters. The universal principle of going to any microcosm of a country, and saying the whole country is like this, is silly. It’s laughable. Especially saying the capital is representative of the country is just out of touch. Most know better.

And educated and apparently not so smart people are the usual culprits. Hearing engineers in D.C. who apparently visited Atlanta’s Stone Mountain sometime, seriously tell people that people in the south dress and go around like the beginnings of the movie “Gone With the Wind” was too funny, if the gross application of this ignorance wasn’t so serious.

And ignorance and expectations are a two-way street. As a bachelor Marine going to Denmark for a first exercise, I had visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, Danish style. I could just imagine nubile topless females sunning themselves in the Tivoli, Copenhagen and my devil’s approach to all. Well, I ended up in the middle of Jutland, and it was more like Mayberry RFD. The old Georgia Tech expression of corn fed farm girls came to mind (an old football insult cheer). So which is a way to write about the how the Danish people are … there is none. It is “site” specific. Denmark is a big country, and Iran is even bigger.

I for one have been to military schools with Iranian military types, not the Army of God types, and have the utmost respect for them from a professional point of view. And I have some other time in various countries and capitals and cultural centers, and know now what most Americans have figured out and also know, there is no generic American. Any citizen from Corona, S.D. that goes to the big city of Minneapolis St. Paul for a visit knows this. I just wish Newsweek types on Tehran paid visits knew this, or would even hint the “site” specific influence of their article. Otherwise they seem funny.