Mike and Mah, two for tea and tea for two!

Mike Wallace came out of retirement this week, to interview Iranian President Mahmound Ahmadinejad for CBS's 60 minutes (see CBS archives here for video). Ahmandinejad’s appearance made for a bit of a coup (if that’s a safe word to use in the Middle East) for CBS as they got the perceived man of the hour to appear on their network first.

Of course the chances of him ending up on Fox were pretty slim, so the network pool of possibles was probably rather small. It’s of interest to note; that it seems that part of the deal was that CBS must provide a complete un-edited version for broadcast in addition to the usual edited one that 60 minutes aired. The Ahmadinejad Unplugged session runs tonight on C-SPAN in the USA.

The long time correspondent for CBS had been wandering the back forty in anxious retirement of late, when the call came that the President would like to meet him to share the word.

His interview with the Iranian leader went through the list of current issues of the day, Iran’s quest for nuclear technology, Iran’s thoughts on the Holocaust, its possible involvement with the insurgents in Iraq, the war in Lebanon and any advice that Ahmandinejad might have for the American President.

Since the program aired on CBS many commentators in the US have expressed less than glowing reviews of Wallace’s conversation with Iran’s leader. Many suggest that Wallace, who was once known for his pit-bull ways, came across more like a poodle, fawning over the Iranian President and giving him a free pass on the issues of the day. Some going so far as to suggest that Wallace must surely have applied for a PR position with the President’s office, such was the spin put on the comments.

Mind you even before the interview aired, Wallace was under attack when he described the Iranian leader as “an impressive fellow”.

Needless to say the folks on the right of the spectrum didn’t think much of those comments nor of the show that would follow.

Investors.com suggested that Wallace was awestruck
Frontpagemag.com called him a dupe
John McInytre at Yahoo News gave Wallace credit for the news coup, but suggested that the Iranian president won in a knockout.
The National Review Online talked about missed opportunities

And those were some of the “reasoned” opinions, there are plenty more available on the net that aren’t quite as, shall we say, measured.

CBS posted its own comment page on the web (scroll down, and down and down!), where writers tended not to be too offensive to the 88 year old interviewer and his subject; some even said he had done a nice job of it all. Though one has to admit that for the most part the fans of Mike seem to be in the minority at the moment.

As for the interview it seemed at times that Wallace went out of his way to be deferential to his host. He went so far as to express fascination with the President’s clothing and appearance, almost reassuring him that he was a dashing young leader. Perhaps Wallace could negotiate a GQ spread for the leader of the Islamic Revolution.

Ahmadinejad offered up some career advice for President Bush during the course of the sixteen minute interview, stating that “those who refuse to accept an invitation to good will not have a good ending or fate”. What exactly that might mean is open to interpretation, but it’s doubtful that he’ll be sleeping over at the White House guest house any time soon to share more thoughts.

For Ahmadinejad, the appearance on 60 minutes is but a small part of his multi media debut to the world. He’s long been the staple of Al Jazeera and just this week launched his very own blog, complete with polls and room for comments.

Of course, this conversion to a free and unfettered media is something to take with more than a grain of salt. It’s still probably not particularly wise to be a fellow journalist or blogger in Iran, as Canadians know oh so well, there have been far too many reports of journalists being tortured or killed while pursuing a story in that part of the world.

With that in mind we somehow don’t see the comment box filling up with requests anytime soon. Nor do we think we’ll se the humour in the President’s blog that the rest of the blogosphere can provide from time to time.

For instance this offering below from a You Tuber, probably won’t be making the short list for the Ahmadinejad Awards this year.




But it does put the Mike and Mah show into a humourous context, which in the end is what the world needs a lot more of. It makes for a moment of needed levity in what seems to have been some very trying times of late, with more unfortunately probably still to come!