If Iran can sue Hollywood over Argo, should we all sue Jeremy Hardy?

I think we should all support the Iranian government in its legal action against the Hollywood actor and director Ben Affleck, for misrepresenting their lovely country in the film Argo. They have a serious legal team lined up to counter the suggestion raised in Argo that Iran is full of half-witted, bearded, brutal Islamist maniacs, all spying on each other and shouting very loudly in the streets and markets etc.

It always occurred to me that this was precisely what Iran was like but, having never been to the place, one should keep an open mind. The Iranians insist that it is a perfectly pleasant country and that Affleck’s film, which is a fictionalised account of the CIA operation to free a bunch of US hostages from Tehran back in 1980, is simply American propaganda.

It is the principle of the thing which interests me. If the Iranians are successful, then so might we be if we sue for having been represented by Hollywood, in 100 years of film, as sexually repressed colonialist imbeciles with bad teeth who would not today exist were it not for the bravery and generosity of the USA; a pale and epicene race of rather aloof and arrogant people who are happy only when sipping a cup of tea or being beastly to the Irish. I am sure there is more to us than Hollywood lets on. Britain gets it in the neck from both right-wing and left-wing US film-makers; whatever we do, we cannot win. So let’s sue. I’d chip into a legal fund if there was the hope of preventing Sean Penn, say, from ever opening his thin little mouth in public again. The Iranians are right that Hollywood’s calumnies have an effect; they lodge in the public mind and create an impression.