TALK TO THE HAND Bollinger, Ahmadinejad (Photo: Getty Images)
Most remarkable about Mahmoud Ahmadinjad's address at Columbia today was not anything he said—he somehow restrained from calling for a fiery death to Israel—but rather the pissing match between the Iranian president and Columbia's president, Lee C. Bollinger.
Bollinger, a leading first amendment scholar known around campus as a silver-haired fox, has been working overtime to defend the speaking invitation he extended to the Iranian leader. After watching his introduction today, it can be surmised that he just wanted the opportunity to tear Mahmoud a new one on the national stage.
"Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Bollinger said to the near-midget (to be fair, he's a lot taller when he's standing on a pile of the oppressed). To deny the Holocaust, Bollinger said, "You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated." Bollinger is no doubt still waiting for an answer to his rhetorical, "Will you cease this outrage?"