Persians and losers

This puts the ol’ Roscoe in a quandary. We didn’t really want to support Hollywood’s latest “gore fest,” the movie 300, which had its monster opening last weekend. But, hey, anything that royally ticks off the Iranian government is a friend of ours. And, boy, are they ticked off.

They say it “insulted Persian civilization”—an oxymoron if we ever heard one…

Here’s the story, reported by China’s People’s Daily—which is quite entertaining on at least three levels:

Iranian official lashes out at Hollywood movie "300" for insulting Persian civilization

An Iranian official on Sunday lashed out at the Hollywood movie "300" for insulting the Persian civilization, local Fars News Agency reported.

Javad Shamqadri, an art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused the new movie of being "part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture", said the report.

Shamqadri was quoted as saying "following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture," adding "certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies."

Read the rest here.

First, this level of paranoia puts Michael Moore and our domestic Bush Derangement Syndrome folks to shame. “Hollywood and cultural authorities,” indeed. We want some of what they’re smokin’…

Second, if you read the whole thing, you can have a fun adventure in English as a second language. (“The movie's effort wound be fruitless, because ‘values in Iranian culture and the Islamic Revolution are too strongly seated to be damaged by such plans’, said the Iranin official.") If you’ve ever been to the People’s Republic, their treatment of other languages is sort of like their plumbing—not real reliable.

Third, nowhere will you be told of the real reason for the outrage: It’s a movie about the PERSIAN DEFEAT. Yeah, say it again: The PERSIAN DEFEAT. Had the Greeks not whupped them decisively here, European history could have taken a decidedly different turn. Forget all the other sound and fury. The real issue:

They’re LOSERS, and they don’t want to be reminded of it.