Sometimes liberal guilt really is a tremendous thing. Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” hit piece indirectly leads to the imprisonment of journalist Maziar Bahari, and Stewart feels so awful about the trouble, he makes a film. I’m not wild about the man’s film-making skills, but you really cannot deny his integrity.
In 2009, Iran held a “free election” and declared incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner. There was good reason to believe the results were fabricated and when Iran-born English journalist Maziar Bahari (Gael García Bernal) films a protester shot by guards, trouble is inevitable. The weird part — the shooting footage? Relatively inconsequential. But that “Daily Show” spy piece? You’re going down, man. Get the standard torture-until-confession contract ready. I’m not kidding. This film implied that the “Daily Show” interview was the premiere offense in Bahari’s crime package.
Death by satire. It’s almost …satirical.
Rosewater represents the unfortunate consequences of a country giving in to fear and paranoia. Are you listening, Dick Cheney? No, of course not; this is practically your vision for America: the verisimilitude of freedom and fair elections, the state-level lack of humor or humility in all things and the arbitrary imprisonment and torture of anybody you don’t like. The spookiest part of Rosewater was not anything on screen – the imprisonment was dull, and to be honest, so was the torture. Most of the pain as presented was psychological – solitary confinement where Mazier dreams up conversations with his father and sister, who were also Irani political prisoners once upon a time. That’s one Hell of a legacy, pal. He did not, however, dream of having conversations with his pregnant wife; that kinda bugs me.
No, the spookiest part of Rosewater is how different from Iran we’re not. Are our elections controversial? Do our politicians get into office 
without majority vote? Sure. Happens all the time. Do we arbitrarily imprison and torture people we don’t like? We sure do.
The biggest difference I see is in Iran, “Monday Night Football” replaced is by Monday Night Confession. Getting coerced confessions out of people is one of Iran’s favorite pastimes. This is an awful, awful thing. The minute I see this happen in the United States, I really will opt for Canadian citizenship. I can’t help thinking, “does anybody buy this? I’m sure some of the prisoners forced to read aloud from the ISpy Koran are true dissidents, but if every confessor is forced under duress to read the same tired crap, would you have any respect for the integrity of the proceedings? Wouldn’t you just look at the poor sap and say, ‘why does our country do this?’ “ And, of course, some people do buy it. Some people eat up this propaganda and pretend they’re better off for it. A small-to-uncomfortably large sample of citizens in every country are gullible fools, buying a line of crap simply because it is presented as authoritative truth – I’m lookin’ at you, Tea Party.
Objectivity knows the real truth.
Iran imprisons Bahari, Maziar
For the crime of his Daily Show share
Would this be his mess,
One can but guess,
Had he been interviewed by Stephen Colbert?
Rated R, 103 Minutes
D: Jon Stewart
W: Jon Stewart
Genre: In case you forgot, Iran still sucks
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Maziar Bahari
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Iran high brass
