some people are just dumb...

[winterbadger]

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader, says Paul the Octopus, the sea creature that correctly predicted the outcome of World Cup games, is a symbol of all that is wrong with the western world.

Comments

[peaceful-fox.livejournal.com]

He's just being shellfish!

[winterbadger]

:-)

[peaceful-fox.livejournal.com]

In all seriousness - an OCTOPUS is what's wrong with the West. Seriously? Wow. We are doing much better than I thought!

[winterbadger]

He's gotten so loony I wonder if he just sticks a pin in the paper to find out what he should denounce today.

[sun-in-splendor.livejournal.com]

He needs to get an afterlife.

[wolfette]

IIRC Islam does not approve of fortune telling. Fortune telling by an animal is probably worse. Fortune telling animals that become media celebs? Media frenzy over an octopus?

From his religion's POV I can see his point.

[snolan.livejournal.com]

It takes one to know one?

If you assume that Ahmadinejad is crazy, and that people who really believe that Octo-Paul was more than random chance are crazy too - then perhaps he's right... based on it takes a crazy person to identify other crazy people...

In other news a huge chemical spill in Burma earlier this week continues to be ignored by the media too busy reporting on Paul, Ahmadinejad, and missing blonde girls.... (this alternate view is fiction, I hope, but so damned typical)

[winterbadger]

From what I understand of Islam, Mr A needs to go a long way to dealing with the beam in his own eye before he worries about the mote of a fortunetelling octopus (to use a Christian reference).

[winterbadger]

Despite my comment to peaceful fox, I don't really believe he's crazy. I think he's a very canny, though entirely unscrupulous, person. I think this is one of the numerous pronouncements that he makes for domestic consumption ("See, I'm virtuous and trying to guard you from the corrupting influences of the degraded Westerners") that I imagine his rural, poorly educated, very unworldly supporters eat up like crazy. It gets picked up in the Western press and looks weird because we're not the intended audience, so we don't have the full context.

I think there's a big difference, rarely appreciated, between stories that don't get reported and ones that don't get the full 24/7 news treatment (which doesn't usually actually bring any more attention to light). I often find that when people complain that X story isn't being reported, it's getting reported fully, but it isn't the headline and it isn't on the lips of all the morning chat show people and the late night comedians. Who, let's face it, aren't any of them really journalists or the place one goes for serious reporting.

The Mr A and the Octopus story, I'd observe, isn't even a featured story on the Torygraph front page--it only shows up there because it's a "most viewed" article. After two stories about a beautician, one on badly Photoshopped images, and an opinion piece.