Memes Abound after Iranian Daily Under Fire For Airbrushing Cigarette From Cleric's Hand

[uhnope]

http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-censorship-airbrushed-ayatollah-cigarette/27886952.html

Ayatollah Mahmud Taleghani, a key figure of the 1979 Islamic Revolution who became Tehran's first Friday Prayers leader after the revolution, was a known chain smoker who wasn't shy about his habit.

A major reformist Iranian daily has created controversy by altering an iconic image of a prominent deceased cleric to remove a cigarette he was holding.

The cleric, Ayatollah Mahmud Taleghani, a key figure of the 1979 Islamic Revolution who became Tehran's first Friday Prayers leader after the revolution, was a known chain smoker who wasn't shy about his habit.

So, when the daily Sharq posted one of Taleghani's most famous pictures on its front page alongside a story marking the anniversary of the cleric's first Friday Prayers sermon, the missing cigarette did not go unnoticed.

http://www.rferl.org/content/iran-censorship-airbrushed-ayatollah-cigarette/27886952.html

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. This would never happen in the United States.

[uhnope]

2. you know that stamp image is also a painting, right?

And not an airbrushed photo?

[jberryhill]

3. Heh, they should have had it painted by an abstract expressionist

I wonder what he would think of being done in a social realist style.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. The Treachery of Images

The Treachery of Images

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. We're on the same page, I think.

The original photo of Jackson Pollack, which I think appeared in an issue of Life magazine in the early 1950s, showed him smoking a cigarette. When the USPS issued a stamp honoring Jackson Pollack and abstract impressionism, the cigarette was removed for the stamp.

As for the painting in the background of the photograph, I do not know which of Pollack's drip paintings it is.

My favorite painting in the National Gallery of Art is Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist):



It is not currently on exhibit, as the building in which it is hung is being renovated.

I work a few blocks from that building. I used to go over there at lunch. The painting was on the lowest level. There was a bench directly in front of it where I could sit down and have it all to myself.

Now I have to settle for the Van Goghs, including this one: