Mark Sanford isn’t the only person relishing the King of Pop’s demise—national-security experts are warning that his death could distract from Iran’s increasing crackdown on democracy.
The jokes popped up almost immediately that Mark Sanford was the luckiest guy on earth after word broke that Michael Jackson had suffered a heart attack. But the notion that Jackson’s death, which preempted virtually all other news coverage on the cable networks last night, is sucking up media attention from other matters carries a dark edge to it as well. National-security experts are warning that without sustained attention on Iran, its repressive tactics could grow more deadly in the coming days.
The Jackson story, paired with Farrah Fawcett’s death and Sanford’s own scandal, “without a doubt” poses a danger in Iran, according to Michael Rubin, an American Enterprise Institute scholar and former Bush administration official.
“It’s a sad commentary that celebrity still trumps national security in news coverage, but that’s the world we live in,” says former Bush official Michael Rubin.
