Wednesday
January 10, 2001
No bleeps
Congratulations to you for printing the letter
by "Unlimited Madness". It shows that you are not afraid
to print four-letter words that in other media such as broadcasting would
have been "bleeped" out.
But more than the content of this letter I was fascinated by the pseudonym
of it's author. Unlimited Madness is obviously a contradiction in terms.
For madness can not have limits.
There are of course different levels of madness. You can be a little
mad or you can be very mad. But madness in itself has no limit. It is like
saying unlimited anger, or better yet unlimited sadness. There is no limit
to some people's anger nor is there limit to the sadness by which one can
witness the state of life in this world.
Perhaps the author means that in the eyes of the like of your publication
and people who read it he/she is very very mad. But that of course means
that the author is not mad at all and it is The Iranian Times that
is a purveyor of an "American" type of madness.
We are therefore puzzled by this pseudonym. Is the author accepting
the label by which "corrupt" Westernized Iranians would call
him? Or is he saying that only a mad mind would use such expletives on
an internet news magazine that may be read by many younger Iranians that
can not read Farsi and their only connection to their greater community
is through websites such as The Iranian Times. Madness truly has
no limits.
Farzan Navab
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