Last week, over 200 Iranian youth were detained for attending a concert that featured Western influenced artists. Rap was bumpin’ and mosh pits were jumpin’. There was booze. 150 bottles of it. There were women, too. And they were dancing. With boys. Mixing with mixers.

All of this constituted as immoral behavior, in violation of Sharia law. The young, and mostly wealthy, concert-goers were exposed to “satanic” propaganda. But the Iranian government felt the youth had been coerced by modern technology and the internet, and “were not aware of the satanic nature of the concert.” If they were, they would certainly be punished. Everyone, prosecution included, wanted to believe most were just curious, eager to learn how devil worshipers perform their melodic rituals. They were released on bail over the weekend. The real culprits were elsewhere.

Americans, meanwhile, filibustered over the unfathomable legal code. Women get lashed for showing their voluptuous “curves”? Drinking is the sign of a “devil worshiper”? And we’re not talking about blood here? Just booze? Wait a minute, how can the government deem rock and rap “obscene”? Bands need a government license to get ill? WTF! OMG!

With each of these statements, our media grew more myopic. “If only we could reach their youth and liberate them from this oppressive government…”

Yesterday’s obsession of violence in our media — on excessive violence in Grand Theft Auto III and gangsta rap and that damned Marilyn Manson fellow influencing young, impressionable minds and sparking school shootings wasn’t relevant anymore. That was here, and this is there. And, besides, our government doesn’t get its hands so deep into our personal decisions.

Here, they missed the point entirely. In Iran, the seat of the disciplinarian is vied for by both state and family - both share the responsibility of protecting the youth. In this case, the state trumps the household because enough households want it that way, and see the all-too-willing Western influence as too great a threat to let a few rich kids party at a private ranch somewhere outside of Tehran.

Here’s the real story: A concert full of Iranians - packed into a swollen 230 person drunk tank - and many of the rich and powerful families in the backdrop don’t feel the same way as the cultural purists. So, more than our distant and appalled soliloquies, it is this contingent in Iran whose influence and action will drive the forces of change in Iranian culture. That is what we should be paying attention to, not how our culture maps to theirs, or how their government is fundamentally different than ours. Beyond international posturing, human rights is really how a land’s people interact with each other and with their own government — not ours.

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