Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Energetic Take On Little Mo's Stutter Step Into Civilization

by John Podhoretz

September 25, 2007 -- "A QUICK peek at the world through the eyes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he spoke at Columbia University's World Monsters - oh, sorry - World Leaders Forum:

* There are no homosexuals in Iran, and he would be very interested to know who told you there were.

Perhaps Ahmadinejad meant to say there were no homosexuals currently alive in Iran he knew about, since when his regime finds out about homosexuals, it has them beaten savagely with lashes before it has them hanged publicly in the town square.

* Families in Iran are 10 times happier to have daughters than they are to have sons, which is demonstrated by the fact that sons in Iran kiss the hands of their mothers.

This is a sign of the great respect shown women in Iran, he said, evidently because kissing one's mother on the cheek is not sufficiently obsequious. Ahmadinejad failed to mention that women in Iran are now being routinely beaten and jailed for wearing clothing deemed unacceptable by religious authorities.

* Only scientists who are morally "pure" can discover things that are of benefit to humanity.

This analysis would come as a surprise to most historians of science, whose biographies of great innovators are filled with examples of their questionable personal conduct.

* Ahmadinejad is an academic himself, and he loves to teach students.

Ah, yes, how nostalgic he is for his own years as a student - when, according to author Mark Bowden, he was among the unspeakable cohorts who held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days inside the American Embassy compound in Tehran.

* There is no nuclear-weapons program in Iran - you know, just like there was no Holocaust.

And speaking of the Holocaust or lack thereof, Iran is "friends with the Jewish people," who are treated just wonderfully by the Iranian regime and "many Jews live in peace and security" inside Iran.

Ahmadinejad evidently defines friendship a bit differently from most other people, since last year he asked whether Jews were even "human beings," and answered his own question by comparing them to livestock.

* He thinks he has a sense of humor. "Let me tell a joke here," he said. "The politicians who are after atomic bombs, politically, they are retarded."

I can only imagine that the mullahs were in stitches over that thigh-slapper.

* He whined about being subjected to uncivil treatment by Columbia President Lee Bollinger, who introduced his invited guest as, among other things, "petty and cruel," "astonishingly uneducated," and bereft of "intellectual courage." Bollinger concluded by expressing "revulsion at all you stand for."

Those sounded like astonishingly harsh words before Ahmadinejad spoke. After Ahmadinejad concluded his repugnant remarks more than an hour later, Bollinger's fantastically fiery denunciation seemed a little mild."

I'd like to take the time to personally thank the Iranian people for sending this clown to prance before the world's elite. His juggling needs some work, and lets face it, the hobo-look went out with Emmet Kelly so he'd be far better served with the old standby of big red nose and floppy shoes, but all in all it was funny as hell and thats what counts.

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