World's Friendliest and Unfriendliest Cities

[nexus73]

Well, if you other commenters want to believe the Persians are good friends of ours, go right ahead.  Maybe you keep missing out on all the articles from the Middle East.  It's not about broad brush strokes folks, it's about who is on who's side in international affairs and given the mess the Middle East is in, those sides and agendas change a lot.

Rick

[Pete from Boston]

It's not about broad brush strokes folks, it's about who is on who's side in international affairs

It's actually about neither of those, but rather "hospitality and helpfulness," the first words of the article this thread is predicated upon.

[Rothman]

Well, if you other commenters want to believe the Persians are good friends of ours, go right ahead.  Maybe you keep missing out on all the articles from the Middle East.  It's not about broad brush strokes folks, it's about who is on who's side in international affairs and given the mess the Middle East is in, those sides and agendas change a lot.

Rick

The fact that you are able to simultaneously realize that we -- both citizens of the U.S. -- have differing opinions about people in Iran while insisting Iran is homogenous in its hatred towards the U.S. is a phenomenon of which I am truly impressed.

[J N Winkler]

I would quite like to visit Tehran.  However, a tourist visa for Iran is very hard for an American to get, and is typically granted subject to the condition that the visitor be accompanied by a minder.  In practice this means Americans can visit Iran only as part of organized tours, and those typically don't work very well for deaf people like me.

As for Marg bar Amrika and all the rest of it, we have to accept that we made our bed in 1953 with Operation Ajax, and now have to lie in it.  If we wanted Iran to be an open, pluralistic society, we would probably have been better off not interfering with Mossadegh than going after the oil.

[formulanone]

Tehran, Lagos, Pyongyang, Ferguson, Damascus, Tripoli, Benghazi...I wonder where these esteemed places rate?  LOL!

Rick

Tehran - safe and friendly, unless you're riding in a car with an Iranian nuke scientist or attending a mass protest.

Iranians I have known have all been classy, cultured, and exceedingly warm and hospitable.  I think it's a mistake to confuse a political culture with unfriendliness.

Say "Death To America!" enough times and image tends to tank over here in the USA.

Rick

Americans are not the best at teasing apart the part from the whole, nor governments from their people.  Then again, neither our government nor our media has ever been particularly keen to have us be any smarter.

When you have masses of Persians chanting "Death To America" on TV it tends to look like those people really don't wish us much good.

Rick

Yes, you said that.  Fortunately, we worldly Americans can view television with enough education, critical thinking, and personal experience to not paint 78 million people with one broad stroke, unless we concede that the world should view us all as Klansmen.

Are we talking about Miami or Fort Lauderdale in this case?

[jeffandnicole]

Tehran, Lagos, Pyongyang, Ferguson, Damascus, Tripoli, Benghazi...I wonder where these esteemed places rate?  LOL!

Rick

Tehran - safe and friendly, unless you're riding in a car with an Iranian nuke scientist or attending a mass protest.

Iranians I have known have all been classy, cultured, and exceedingly warm and hospitable.  I think it's a mistake to confuse a political culture with unfriendliness.

Say "Death To America!" enough times and image tends to tank over here in the USA.

Rick

Americans are not the best at teasing apart the part from the whole, nor governments from their people.  Then again, neither our government nor our media has ever been particularly keen to have us be any smarter.

When you have masses of Persians chanting "Death To America" on TV it tends to look like those people really don't wish us much good.

Rick

Which means that the government propaganda on their end is working. Do you really think that even a large protest constitutes a significant portion of the population of Tehran? Tehran is one of the biggest cities in the world. With over 8 million people, a protest with 100,000 people would barely crack 1% of the population. And because their state-owned television cameras are pointing on the 1.25% of the city's population the street, you're not seeing the other 98.75% of the population.

Which is exactly the point of their propaganda - to convey an image that they want to project. They're not fools, and they know the evening news shows will display the mass crowds of people and that Westerners will tune in and see those images.

Doesn't matter what the subject is.

For you football fans, you probably have imagines of Eagles fans pelting Santa with snowballs because it's mentioned so frequently, even though that incident happened in the 1960's, or know the Eagles stadium as the one with the jail cells (which were rooms used to hold unruly fans...in 2004). 

If there's a meeting the news covers, and they want to show a certain viewpoint, they will extract what they need to do that. If they interview 20 people and 2 have the view the news is trying to convey, those 2 interviews will be aired; not the other 18.

I've been to many road-related public meetings.  When I read about some of them in the paper or view it on the news later that evening, I wonder if there were two separate meetings going on as the report's viewpoint was very different from what I experienced.

[formulanone]

To be fair, Dolphins Stadium also has a mini-jail. Hell, so does Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom.