For over a week the people of Iran captured the imagination of the world, tweeting, youtube-ing and texting their way to international support. Despite the best efforts of the Mullahs, Ayatolla Khameni and "President" Ahmandinejad, who cut the internet lines and jammed cell phone, the green people revolution marched on. The Iranian oppressors were on the run, or so it seemed, even though western leaders such as President Obama, did little to support the Iranian people. Civilians around the world set up proxy servers, retweeted information from Iran, and spread YouTube videos of Neda and others. in fact
#iranelection and other variants of it, occupied the top 3-4 spots in the Twitter top 10 for over a week.
That was, until
Michael Jackson died. The 50 year old Pedophile, with the plastic face and unauthentic hair knocked the real people of Iran off the top 4 spots on twitter within hours of his death. Instead of retweeting the heroism of the people of Iran, they were speculating on the reasons for Jackson's "untimely" death. His death propelled his songs to the top of the download charts and and moved Neda's death down the charts. The Pedophile overtook the student revolution and the world's attention to the events in Iran waned. 1.6 million people signed up for the Michael Jackson memorial at the Staples Center tomorrow but only a small fraction of that number turned up to support rallies for the Iranian people. The contrast and the irony is too great. Even today, Michael Jackson is in spot #4 and
#iranelection is number 8. The people of the world have lost interest in Iran and Jackson continues to grab headlines.
We have a problem. If our attention and that of the news media can be swayed from earth shattering events and real people, fighting real oppression with the ease that Michael Jackson swayed it, we have a problem. If we are riveted by a miscreant pedophile, who lived extravagantly and ran away from reality, then we have lost our moral compass. Twitter is a pretty accurate reflection of what people are thinking and CNN is a reflection of what media people are thinking. Jackson is ahead of Iran on Twitter and the top story on CNN today was Jackson's memorial. We have a problem.
