Legacy media obituaries for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei made the ruthless tyrant sound like a teddy bear. From The Wall Street Journal, whose reporting has trended more progressive in recent years, to The Washington Post, which wears its progressive editorial orientation as a badge of honor, media outlets have beclowned themselves in their portrayals of a man who dedicated his life to murder and repression.
Borrowing from the Post’s widely ridiculed 2019 description of terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere scholar,” the Journal’s characterization of Khamenei as an “austere cleric” left many readers appalled. But it was the obituaries from the Post and The New York Times that really grated.
From its headline, “Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power, Is Dead at 86,” to the almost lyrical depiction of his “avuncular and magnanimous aloofness,” the Times’ empathy for this brutal dictator was on full display.
Sounding more like a eulogy, the Times’ obituary read: “With his spectacles, Palestinian kaffiyeh, long robes and silver beard, Ayatollah Khamenei cast himself as a religious scholar as well as a writer and translator of works on Islam. He affected an avuncular and magnanimous aloofness, running the country from a perch above the jousting of daily politics.”
The New York Times is getting roasted for its obituary headline on Ayatollah Khamenei, where he’s described as a “Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power.”