The Rachel Maddow Show   |  March 12, 2013

Iran photo edit too ridiculous to hide forbidden touch

Rachel Maddow reports on another Iranian scandal compounded by embarrassing scandal when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was photographed touching a woman he's not related to and then got caught in a sloppy Photoshop job attempting to cover it up.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> best new thing in the world. you may recall how iran's state run news agency covered the oscar's. they redesigned the oscar's dress for michelle obama by adding sleeves, and turned her ball gown into a t-shirt. last week, ahmadinejad went to hugo chavez 's funeral. at one point this happened. he comforted hugo chavez 's grieving mother, a nice human thing to do, unless you're supposed to follow the iranian orders that a man may not touch a woman he is related to for any reason. not touch ever. and they're serious. just last month, iran's ambassador to germany had to makeup a story about this incident when a woman high fived him. after the video surfaced, he said he was waving hello and she misinterpreted and touched him against his well. now they're on him for touching chavez's grieving mother. his supporters say it never happened. they argue that photo is fake. they say the real picture actually looked like this. he was holding hands, not with a middle aged lady but with an old bald guy who turns out is the guy that used to run the international atomic energy agency . so yeah, no. that said, if you find it convincing, we can always go to the tape. there's mahmoud ahamdinejad greeting his mother, here comes the touching, they touched, it happened. so this is embarrassing for mr. ahmadinejad and the clerics back home. maybe he was caught in the clasp of a grieving mother, could do nothing about it. but this horrible attempt by his supporters to cover up the evidence of what happened and replace that nice lady with that man, this failing so spectacularly is a good thing for the world because when people lie and makeup stuff for political reasons get caught and become an international laughing stock , photo shopping does not advance you politically and instead makes you look ridiculous. then honestly, a small blow has been landed for truth, justice and the undoctored verifiable record of actual events. so to be really atroesh usually bad, iranian photo shopped doctors, i proclaim you the next thing, i want you to leave the first lady's sleeves alone.

>>> time for "the last word with lawrence o'donnell." thanks for