Happy birthday, Iran-Contra!

Why wasn't the anniversary of Iran/Contra covered by the MSM?

Probably because most of the twits who (dis)grace the news rooms of today probably are to young to even remember that it was a big deal, let alone have a clue how that goofy chapter in presidential/vice presidential history plays into today's catastrophe in the Middle East.

Happy birthday, Iran-Contra! - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine:

This anniversary fixation makes it all the more baffling that one particularly significant anniversary recently went unnoticed: the 20th anniversary, on Nov. 25, of the Iran-Contra scandal. On that day in 1986, Attorney General Ed Meese confirmed press reports that the Reagan White House had sold arms secretly to Iran and, defying legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president, gave the proceeds to a group (the 'Contras') that was trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. An independent prosecutor was promptly assigned to the case, and Congress created a joint investigative committee that many believed would lead to the impeachment of President Reagan. That didn't happen, of course. But Iran-Contra was a hugely significant political event.

Why no anniversary coverage? It certainly wasn't because that date was crowded with other news. Nov. 25 fell this year on a Saturday during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Newsrooms were half-empty, and front pages were padded out with stories like 'Cities Compete In Hipness Battle to Attract Young' (New York Times). Yet apart from an AP story about the National Security Archive's document-rich commemoration, I found precisely zero newspaper or magazine articles when I checked the Nexis and Google News databases for recent stories containing the words Iran, Contra, anniversary, and 20. (The Nation magazine covered the anniversary via David Corn's 'Capital Games' Web log, but even that came three days late.)