A MAN WITH A MEMORY TALKS ABOUT THE IRANIAN HOSTAGE CRISIS | 2001-04-14
When the Iranians seized the American embassy and took Americans hostage in 1979, the media called those people "hostages" almost from the word go. But they kept calling the Iranians who took and held them "students." It wasn't that Iran approved this, you see, it was just a bunch of unruly students who had stormed the Embassy.
It took the press a long time to finally stop calling those Iranians "students."
In the 1979 case, the problem was that the media did not know which side to be on. In Vietnam, only a few years earlier, they had been solidly on the side of those killing Americans. Until the American people made it clear they wouldn't stand for that this time, the media did a lot of pussyfooting. All that is forgotten today.
In 1979, when the Iranian hostages were taken, Teddy Kennedy had already announced that he was challenging sitting Democratic president Jimmy Carter for the nomination in 1980.
What you hear today is that the Iranian hostage crisis beat Teddy, which is true. But they also say that was because of the way Carter handled the hostage crisis early on, which is not true.
Teddy Kennedy reacted to the taking of our hostages in Teheran in the old Vietnam manner. He loudly attacked the United States and blamed the whole situation on us. In other words, he was a standard liberal. It didn't take long for that to destroy his bid for the presidential nomination.
You won't hear about that anywhere but here.