They're both horrible actors, and they seem to find stupid ways to get into the news. For Iran, it's admitting they did drugs but then retracting that admission, even though it was recorded by a reporter. For Lohan, it's pursuing a nuclear program despite international criticism. Or maybe that's the other way around.
Regardless, Iran has made another spectacular public relations move. On Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country would host a conference to examine the scientific evidence surrounding the Holocaust.
Ahmadinejad has not exactly been the most Jewish-friendly world leader. He has said the Holocaust was a myth and has called for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth. Not exactly the kind of guy you'd want to invite to your Passover seder.
A spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, which is planning the event, said the conference will look at the scientific aspect of the issue to discuss and review its repercussions.
Alright, so everyone can relax now, because science is involved. I'm sure the conference attendees will bring up objective evidence disproving the massive amount of documents and survivor testimony detailing the slaughter of millions of Jews, blacks, Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and the mentally and physically disabled.
Here's just a guess at the conference's conclusions: 1. The Holocaust is a creation of a global Jewish conspiracy.
2. Death to Israel.
The Iranian conference is just one part of the larger Holocaust denial movement. Many within this movement claim to be reputable historians, but they often get caught falsifying documents or misrepresenting historical data.
And, unfortunately, a lot of people buy into this, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Well-known Holocaust deniers include former chess prodigy Bobby Fischer, who was infamous for using the Queen's Pawn of the Zionist Conspiracy Gambit.
However, if the purpose of the Iranian Holocaust Denial-palooza is to convince Americans that six million Jews weren't really systematically slaughtered, then Iran has a difficult task ahead of it. Pseudo-science like this just doesn't have credence in the United States.
You see, here in America, we make sure everything taught in our classrooms is backed up with factual evidence. Otherwise, you could just make some crap up - or draw it from, say, the Book of Genesis - and teach it to our kids in public schools.
For example, you could just completely deny the theory of evolution - a theory with a lot of supporting evidence. Instead of natural selection, you could claim life was designed as-is by some generic, nondenominational supreme being. You could even give this theory some scientific sounding name, like Intelligent Design or the Baby Jesus Loves Me Theory.
Theories like Holocaust denial or the BJLM should never be approved for any public school curriculum. Beyond the lack of empirical support, there's the issue of the motivation behind the theories - neither theory is motivated by a search for truth. One is just a blatantly anti-Semitic ideology. The other is an attempt to teach kids that the earth is only 6000 years old and that God put dinosaur fossils in the ground in order to confuse us.
That's not to say there's a slippery slope that leads from BJLM theory to Holocaust denial. But a blatant disregard for the scientific method exists in both. These theories are examples of people trying to pass their personal feelings off as science.
Despite this, the BJLM theory has a lot of public support. According to an August 2005 poll by the Pew Foundation, 42 percent of Americans say they believe that humans and other living things have only ever existed in their present form. An additional 18 percent say they believe that life evolved over time, but that evolution was guided by a supreme being - not through natural selection. The remaining 40 percent have been in, or at least seen, a library.
But Holocaust denial doesn't have that kind of support, so you don't have to worry about the local elementary school teaching your little Billy that Adolf Hitler wasn't that bad. But if little Billy grew up in Iran, the Iranian government would probably teach him that the Holocaust didn't actually happen.
And that's something Iran and Lindsay Lohan actually differ on.
- Joe Merical is a senior journalism major. Send him an e-mail at jm184701@ohiou.edu.
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Joe Merical
What do Lindsay Lohan and Iran have in common?
