I’ve spent a lot of time in Iran, including the last two years. I’ve always been impressed at how ordinary citizens quote poetry in daily conversation, and how bystanders sometimes join in (they have it memorized).

In Iran, statues of poets grace public parks, streets are named after poets, and children memorize the classics in school. Little slips of paper with quotes from the classics may be sold by street urchins or even picked out of a stack by a “fortune-teller’s” parakeet.

The lyrics of much of classical Iranian music is, you guessed it, classical Iranian poetry. The classics are great–think Omar Khayam, Rumi, the poem by Sa’adi displayed in the United Nations building in New York. It’s nice to know that blogs are displaying the new poetry continually being added to this corpus by young and old.

I read a somewhat distorted story about Obama being criticized for comments he made in a recent speech. The editor who wrote the title of the story distorted the story. He failed to mention that the criticizms came from predictable sources — Clinton and McCain.

The article writer did some distorting too. The reference to the changed Bankrupty Law said the Law was being “reformed”. That’s a good word to use by a phony politician or lobbyist but not a journalist writing a news story. The law in question wasn’t “reformed”. It was changed for the benefit of the Banking and Loan industries, making possible interest rates that any reasonable person would call usurious. That “reform” also made it more difficult for debtors to declare bankruptcy.
Sooo, tell me, who paid off that editor and that “journalist”?

D.S.