5 Things You Missed While Obsessing Over Michael Jackson
Benjamin Sarlin is a reporter for The Daily Beast. He previously covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com.
While America has been caught up in Michael Jackson's death in recent days, Iran's government launched further crackdowns and stonewalled on the vote recount. Here are five big stories you may have missed while watching YouTube videos of MJ's Super Bowl performance.
Where Iran's Regime Learned Its Tricks
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
Iran's torture practices are even worse than the beatings on YouTube. Daily Beast contributor and human rights lawyer Scott Horton on the nation's most notorious torturer.
Iran's Supreme Revolutionary
Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.
By inexplicably inserting himself into the election controversy, Ayatollah Khamenei is destroying his reputation and tainting himself with an aura of corruption, Reza Aslan writes. Worse, he's unwittingly turning a protest into a revolution.
Why Ahmadinejad Could Still Lose
The writer, who uses a pseudonym for his own safety, is a university student in Iran.
While incumbent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares victory, runner-up candidate says it's fraud. Iranian university student Telmah Parsa on the divergent groups-Iran's young hipsters versus their deeply religious parents-that may have swayed presidential election, and why the country's semi-democratic process is still much richer than the Middle East's other faux elections.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
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