I’m not asking much from the legacy media. I don’t expect that wokeness will die in darkness or that they’ll learn a lesson from their own nonsense. All I’m asking is that when a brutal Islamist murderer dies, they treat him like a brutal murderer. Or, barring that, they learn from the last time they praised a brutal Islamist murderer.
In this case, they’ve had six years and four months, almost to the day. On Oct. 27, 2019, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — head of the Islamic State group for nine years — was killed in Syria.
This was the infamous Washington Post obituary headline, which was promptly altered:
WaPo’s actual obit for a terrorist monster:
“austere religious scholar w/ wire-frame glasses”
“Mr. Baghdadi maintained a canny pragmatism”
“Acquaintances would remember him as a shy, nearsighted youth who liked soccer but preferred to spend his free time at the local mosque” pic.twitter.com/XFFBnUsHEO
— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) October 27, 2019
And then, on Feb. 28, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died in the first fusillade of American strikes against the Shi’a theocratic regime. Khamenei had recently slaughtered tens of thousands of his people and cut off most internet access so the oppressed couldn’t tell the world about it — and he was the head of a literal Islamic state, or what the group al-Baghdadi ran yearned to be.
Surely they learned, right?
Right?
The New York Times never fails to disappoint.
Old and busted: Austere Religious Scholar
New hotness: Hard-Line Cleric pic.twitter.com/imV9PJRwrj
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) March 1, 2026
Six years to avoid this and that’s what you get: “Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power.” But was he austere, New York Times? Enquiring minds want to know.
To be fair, the Times’ Khamenei obit was not terribly complimentary, describing him upfront as a man who “turned the Islamic Republic into a regional power, brutally crushing dissent at home, and maintaining unswerving hostility to the United States and Israel.”
As the second leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khamenei cemented and expanded its hard-line Islamist and anti-Western policies, shaping the nation’s Islamic revolution far more than its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who held power for just a decade, most of it during a devastating war with Iraq.
At home, Ayatollah Khamenei ruled with an iron fist, blocking attempts at moderate reforms, labeling public demands for change as Western-orchestrated “sedition” and squelching dissent with arrests and executions. He vastly expanded a loyal military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, whose intelligence wing served as a powerful tool of repression.
Which, fair enough, but compare that headline with the ones the Times had for the obituaries of American figures guilty of nothing but wrongthink, like Rush Limbaugh or Scott Adams of “Dilbert” fame:
I’m merely asking NY Times to treat the passing of a known terrorist with the same invective as they gave Rush Limbaugh. pic.twitter.com/IXlS68BhcC
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) March 1, 2026
You do not hate the New York Times enough pic.twitter.com/4YmIRsBLl1
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 1, 2026
Lovely. Neither Adams or Limbaugh, mind you, was responsible for a single death. Just this year, Khamenei killed over 30,000 of his people to crack down on dissent. But sure, I can see why you might think he’s every bit as bad as a Jew-hating psychopathic dictator who murders anyone who dares to defy the theocracy.
Meanwhile, over at The Washington Post — the originator of the “austere religious scholar” meme — things were actually worse when you got into the article proper, which was far more ambiguous about the . One paragraph in particular was beyond parody:
With his bushy white beard and easy smile, Ayatollah Khamenei cut a more avuncular figure in public than his perpetually scowling but much more revered mentor, and he was known to be fond of Persian poetry and classic Western novels, especially Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” But like the uncompromising Khomeini, he opposed moderates’ efforts to promote political and social reforms domestically and to secure rapprochement with the United States.
Yeah, sure, the man turned his own state into a version of “Les Misérables” with hundreds of thousands of Inspector Javerts patrolling its own population and the world at large, but at least he came across like literary ol’ Uncle Santa Claus if he wasn’t going to kill you and your family because your daughter had the temerity to step out without a headscarf. That’s not hyperbolic sarcasm, that’s literally the point that paragraph makes. These people wonder why they’re being fired.
I can think of a lot of words to describe Khamenei, but “avuncular” is not one of them https://t.co/qwSQORJ7da
— Molly Hogan (@MiMiHogan) March 1, 2026
More evidence that you do not hate the media enough.
It’s early days in Iran. Who’ll they eulogize in friendly terms next? Stay tuned for “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Avuncular Jacket-Wearer and Austere Political Scholar, Dead From Western Running-Dog Airstrikes.”
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