I hated that Columbia gave him this forum. But overall I don’t think the little president did anything much that was the least bit startling, or even memorable. We expected him to lie, and he lied. We expected him to equivocate over destroying Israel, and he did so, in utterly unmemorable language. Except, of course, for his remark about homosexuals in Iran, which at least was interesting.
Otherwise, no one was fooled by him during his visit who hadn’t already committed to being fooled by him before he got here. Now he’s back in Iran, no more, and no less, dangerous than he was before. And it will go with him as Allah has ordained, or the mullahs decide.
So I’m no more disturbed by Ahmadinejad now than I was before last week. But what I do find to be disturbed about are the Columbia students who clearly were so thrilled with him. As Ann Coulter describes the essence of that encounter (“Tase Him Bro!”):
At Ahmadinejad's speech, every vicious anti-Western civilization remark was cheered wildly. It was like watching an episode of HBO'S "Real Time With Bill Maher."
Ahmadinejad complained that the U.S. and a few other "monopolistic powers, selfish powers" were trying to deny Iranians their "right" to develop nukes.
Wild applause.
Ahmadinejad repeatedly refused to answer whether he seeks the destruction of the state of Israel.
Wild applause.
He accused the U.S. of supporting terrorism.
Wild applause.
Only when Ahmadinejad failed to endorse sodomy did he receive the single incident of booing throughout his speech.
Which signifies exactly this: the Columbia U students represented by this cross-section of cheering fans can wildly applaud the little president’s anti-Western attacks because they don’t see themselves as Westerners, they know even less than Ahmadinejad does about what the West, and especially the religious West, is all about, and the whole concept of being Western has no reality for them. Consquently, being Western is nothing of value to them.
They can wildly applaud their own country being accused of being “monopolistic,” and cheer the supposed "right" of a deranged terrorist theocracy to have the bomb, because the grave danger to the Middle East, to Israel, and even to themselves has absolutely no reality to them, and has no value in their eyes.
They can applaud wildly Ahmadinejad’s transparent refusal to answer questions about his oft-stated intention of destroying Israel, understanding completely that he is in fact endorsing the threat by refusing to deny it, because what Israel is, why it exists, what it faces in order to survive, and especially that Israel is one of our strongest allies, means absolutely nothing to them, and has no reality to them, and preventing a second Jewish genocide and standing by a worthy ally against implacably evil enemies is not a value to them.
They can cheer wildly when the little president accuses their country of “supporting terrorism,” because their ignorance of what terrorism is, and which nations wholesale in it, and which nations, like their own, don’t ever deserve to be called such a thing, is so far beyond their moral aptitude that the term “terrorism” is nothing more than an insult, like calling someone a “bitch,” a “control freak,” or a “Nazi.”. The idea of becoming indignant when a lying Persian rat tells them to their faces that their country is the real evil of the globe is just not something that they care about.
But it turns out what they absolutely care about is protecting one of the central myths of gay rights dogma. This is what morality is to them. College students will cheer what they don’t understand and don’t really believe where there is some perverse antagonistic pleasure to be derived from it. But booing has to come from the heart.
Actually, the students didn’t boo the little president right away, and they didn’t boo him for the reasons people seem to think they did. First they jeered and laughed at him for daring to suggest that there were no homosexuals in Iran. Why was that funny? Because, as every sexually educated Columbia U student can tell you, homosexuality is ubiquitous in every age and nation, and we in our country only admit to the low 10% estimate because we’re so homophobic that the rest of the poor buggers have to stay hidden in the closet.
One of the bedrock tenets of the gay-rights movement is its vastly inflated estimate of the percentage of the species who are homosexual, a myth essential for achieving the illusions of normalcy and moral equality with heterosexuals. So to suggest that there is anyplace, anywhere, anytime, that has not got its requisite assignment of queers, lesbians, transgendered persons, dikes, and drag queens only proves that the speaker is a fool. Informed laughter must result.
Although within minutes pundits and cartoonists were pointing out that Iran’s lack of homosexuals may be related to its policy of executing them, that fact, and that irony, had nothing to do with why the students were jeering and laughing in that particular moment. They were just laughing because heterodox opinions about homosexuality hit them right where they live, and it was so unexpectedly ridiculous, they couldn’t help but laugh.
(Remember that no one at a podium had ever said something like that to them in all their years of American education!)
And only when Ahmadinejad stuck to his guns did they boo. They booed for the same reasons evangelicals would boo if Christopher Hitchens crashed their church services and told them there was no God. They booed because this man was insulting one of their dearest personal dogmas.
How many gays there are, surviving, in Iran, I have no way of knowing. That’s not my point.
My point is, why didn’t the students laugh when Ahamdinejad tried to claim his backwards, seventh-century world was superior to the modern West, Europe, America, and Columbia University?
Why didn’t they laugh when he told them Iran had a right to nuclear weapons?
Why didn’t they laugh when the president of the leading terrorist-supporting government on Earth said it was the United States that supports terrorism?
All these statements were every bit as false, and even more so, and certainly more ridiculous than what he said about Iran having no gays.
My point is that Ahmadinejad’s unintended foo-poo about Iran’s gays inadvertently illuminated the moral priorities of these American students--casting into relief not what they’ll cheer for, but what they’ll boo. An incinerated Israel, a subjugated America, a nuclear Iran, Who cares? But how dare that little twerp try to come in here and tell us there are no Homo-Iranians? Snap!
I believe that when Ahmadinejad returned to Tehran, and was debriefed by the military planners of the Iranian Military Guard, it went something like this:
“Will they fight, Mr. President? Will these Americans fight us over the bomb? Will they fight us if we attack Israel? Will these infidels fight to defend their own blasphemous country?”
“Not a chance, boys. I don’t want to be uncharitable, but these infidels are a joke. We’ll get our bomb, okay. We’ll roast Israel without too much trouble, and I tell you the people of the Great Satan will tear each other to pieces before they’ll ever retaliate. But there is one thing I'm kind of concerned about.”
“What’s that, boss?”
“The American homosexuals. The infidels are clearly quite loyal to them. And they can be really vicious!”
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