Today on the talking head shows, reaction to the Iranian election was a great example of what is most wrong with TV coverage of foreign policy and international relations. A host of people with no knowledge, expertise or insight on Iran or the Middle East (most of whom do not seem to know so much as the name of Mirhossein Mousavi, referring to some unnamed “opposition candidate”) were invited to give their evaluation of the results as if their views on the matter merited consideration.

The worst of the lot was John King’s show on CNN, during which the insufferable “power couple” James Carville and Mary Matalin were asked what they thought about the results and their implications for US-Iranian relations. The answers were predictably tinned, and represented the maddening tendency on cable TV for all complex foreign policy issues to get reduced to a partisan political debate between GOP and Democratic party hacks aimed solely at spinning the issue for what are ultimate electoral purposes. It is, in the final analysis, interesting to see how the two parties and other domestic political factions are positioning to use these issues in their sub-ideological power struggles. But surely those questions must be a corollary to a proper and informed analysis of what is actually going on overseas and not a substitute for it, as it so often is in TVland.

On NBC’s Meet The Press, which has still not recovered from the tragic early death of Tim Russert, Joe Scarborough fell into the trap of welcoming the re-election of Ahmadinejad as “good for the United States” in the long run. Perhaps he simply means that, from his GOP-centered perspective, this result will be bad for Obama, and hence good for the United States, but it seems more likely that he actually thinks that our country benefits from the public face of Iran remaining this malevolent clown with his apocalyptic rhetoric and no ability to conduct a constructive foreign policy for his own country. This only makes sense if one has concluded that war is inevitable and the challenge now is making the case for it to the American people and international public opinion. As I noted the other day, extremists tend to like other extremists and seem to feel threatened by even a hint at moderation. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz makes the same mistake from their own point of view. I would also note that the AP is now predicting, as I did yesterday, that Netanyahu will probably be making the most of Ahmadinejad’s reelection in his major foreign policy speech which is to be delivered later today.

I was once on a major financial news network to discuss stereotyping against Arabs and Muslims in the entertainment industry. I was fully made-up, IFBed and sitting in front of the camera, waiting for the interview to begin. Then word came through that the Fed had made a minor adjustment to the prime interest rate. For the next 45 minutes I was assured that we would be coming to segment soon, but that this story required immediate attention, which was perfectly reasonable. I was then informed, also perfectly reasonably, that the story on the prime required uninterrupted focus at that time, and that I would be invited back the following day to discuss stereotyping. Unless, it was added, I cared to comment on the adjustment of the prime myself. It was an interesting, but ultimately simple, ethical and practical choice: I could have commented on something I essentially know nothing about and thereby have acquired two, instead of one, valuable opportunities to promote the organization I worked for at the time, which was employing me precisely to do so; alternatively, I could have honestly declined and simply returned the following day to talk about something I actually know about. It was an easy choice to do the latter, as I did, but also oddly tempting for a fleeting moment and a representatively absurd situation. Ever since I have had an even greater appreciation for the sheer shamelessness of those who agree to pontificate on subjects about which they are utterly unqualified and the fecklessness of the producers and stations that give them the chance.

By contrast, C-Span, which is often a bastion of substance in this landscape of dross, featured an excellent interview with Karim Sadjapour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on its Washington Journal program. Sadjapour pointed to the extremely suspicious “fact” that Mousavi, an ethnic Azeri, was supposedly trounced in Iranian Azeri areas, which he compared to the idea that McCain would have sounded beaten Obama in African-American districts. He also deftly navigated a reasonable space between those callers who simply accepted the official account of the election results and blamed the US for all problems in US-Iranian relations and those who indulged in Islamophobic rhetoric, which he properly and frankly described as “asinine.” Not being a noted, all-purpose talking head, or a GOP or Democratic party apparatchik, Sadjapour (like most other real experts) was sadly missing from the more well-watched cable channels. As usual.