NunoftheAbove

The recently re-elected President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must be feeling some nostalgia watching out his windows at the turbulence in the streets of Tehran.  Does he long for his Revolutionary Guard days and the bringing down of the old-guard as the streets burn and the bullets whiz?  Maybe he just wants to don the mask of a terrorist and join in just to get the old buzz again.  But then again, there is no embassy of the great Satan to take over, so he huddles behind his loyalists and multilayers of security.  My how things have changed — and that might be his undoing.

When the Muslim students attacked the embassy,  the newspaper was still the mainstay of most news buffs and satellite television was in its infancy.  With the first commercial television satellites only five years old, transmissions from the other side of the world were possible,  but there was many technical issues and logistics to consider.   Following the embassy takeover,  media, print and television, carried the story as their lead news story.  As is true with most news stories, interest in the hostage situation eventually waned as other national and world events took precedence.  One show, however, was to rise to prominence during the hostage crisis and bring a dramatic change in the way people get their information.

Looking back at this point in history it is amazing to realize the primitive nature that was the news media of the day.  There were no 24/7 news shows, no CNN, no Sirrus, no internet.  Most people didn’t know what a computer was much less be able to envision the way in which they would change the delivery of information.  There was, however, a new television program which premiered on ABC just days before the embassy takeover.  Nightline was a half-hour show that in an almost suicidal move went up against late-night television king, Johnny Carson.  ABC’s president, Roone Arledge, began to see the show as a way to capitalize on the public’s new found patriotism following the hostage-taking by offering updates on the crisis while at the same time not taking time away from his traditional nightly news program.  With the dramatic title, Iran Crisis, America Held Hostage, viewers could follow the unfolding of a news event on a daily basis.  Replacing the original host, ABC anchor Frank Reynolds, veteran ABC reporter Ted Koeppel began chronicling the Iranian incident and a producer had the idea of adding the number of days which had elapsed since the original takeover to the title of the program.  Although the hostage situation only last 444 days, the format for the show was set, and it was the predecessor to the plethora of news shows that have followed on both network, cable, and satellite television.

For Ahmadinejad, Nightline must have been a great ego boost.  For 30 minutes a day, he could enjoy the angst Americans were feeling over being bested by a group of radicals in a country most couldn’t even locate on a map.  What he might not have considered, however, was the reaction that was rising up from the Great Satan.  The embarrassment would quickly turn resolve and that resolve would turn to anger.  Possibly even more disgusting to the  Americans than the hostage-takers was the ineffectiveness seen in Washington’s ability to resolve the crisis.  And this wave of emotion would throw the hapless Jimmy Carter out and bring in the hawkish Ronald W. Reagan.

In the same way, a new wave is taking over Iran right now.  The protestors in the streets are by and large young people who are tired of the strict reins of the theocracy to which Admadinejad owes his power.  Attempts to eliminate the spread of information is not as easy as it was in 1979.  Tech savy and loaded with cash, the youth of Iran are broadcasting their rebellion faster and easier than could have ever been imagined when the Muslim students scaled the walls of the American embassy.  Twitter, camera and video phones, Skyping have not only spread the news of the rebellion within Iran but around the world as well.

It is too early to tell whether the current Iranian crisis will be succsuccessful, but it is for certain that in this fight technology is the first weapon of the protestors.  For Almadinejad who came to power through violence, it must the a cruel irony to see himself going down not because of superior firepower but superior thumbpower.