What's in a Name?, Part Three

Oh great, so it looks like that article about Ahmadinejad's Jewish ancestry was completely bogus. So says the Guardian anyway, and their refutation is, alas, far more convincing in its detail than the Telegraph's report.

So what's the real story here? I think one has to file this under "The Continuing Plummet of Journalistic Integrity and Accuracy." I mean, I don't think it's unreasonable that I and the hundreds of thousands of other people who read the article took it at face value when it contained firm declarations like the following: "he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver" and "a London-based expert on Iranian Jewry said that 'jian' ending to the name specifically showed the family had been practising Jews." And this in a "quality" paper that was founded, according to Wikipedia, way back in 1855.

Nonetheless, the Guardian's demolition of the above claims is quite thorough. So where the hell were the fact-checkers? And more disturbingly, will the Telegraph even truly regret their nonsense, or after the inevitable mea culpa, will they secretly not mind that the huge amount of traffic they drew was for piece that would've been better suited to the birther boosters over at World Net Daily? That I can even ask the question tells you something about the state of journalism (or "journalism"?) in the world today.

As for Ahmadi himself, no doubt he will cite this as proof of the myriad conspiracies against him and the regime. Which is not to say that he and his cronies have shown any compunction about making up lies out of whole cloth, but it certainly doesn't help matters to hand him a propaganda tool that'll actually seem to have some hint of truth to it. So thanks for that, too, Telegraph.

Anyhow, we all know that Ahmadinejad's an evil little worm, whatever his heritage, and we can only continue to hope that those he has oppressed will one day rise up to crush him beneath their feet, but it looks like this whole Telegraph episode will actually help rather than hurt him, assuming it makes any difference at all.

Update: Adam Sandler-inspired alternative post title: "Ahmadinejad...not a Jew! But you know who is? Hall of famer Rod Carew!"