The problem with Nicholas Kristof is that you get the feeling that he is dead serious, even when he writes ridiculous things.

In his editorial for tomorrow's NY Times (Our Not-So-Free-Press) he writes about freedom of the press and tries to scare people into thinking that right-wing judges are taking away your rights and that things are better in Iran. I quote:

In May, Iran's secret police detained me in Tehran and demanded that I identify a revolutionary guard I had quoted as saying "to hell with the mullahs." My interrogators threatened to imprison me unless I revealed my source. But after a standoff, the Iranian goons let me go. Imprisoning Western journalists for protecting their sources was too medieval, even for them. Let's hope the U.S. judicial system shows the same restraint as those Iranian thugs.



Compare this to the following report in his own newspaper just yesterday.

Iran has continued its crackdown on journalists, with two arrests in the past week, and has moved against pro-democracy Web sites, blocking hundreds of sites in recent months and making several arrests.

Mahboubeh Abbas-Gholizadeh, the editor of the magazine Farzaneh and an advocate of expanded rights for women, was arrested Nov. 1 after she returned from London, where she had attended the European Social Forum.

Fereshteh Ghazi, a journalist for the daily newspaper Etemad, who also writes about women's issues, was arrested four days earlier after she was summoned to court to answer questions, said her husband, Ahmad Begloo.

I can't tell what drives Kristof's column more, his ignorance or his ego.