Weighing the aftermath of Ahmadinejad’s Columbia speech

I am beginning to think that the positive propaganda moments that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were looking for are being outweighed by the negatives. When the AP leads with this:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust revisionists and raised questions about who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks in a tense showdown Monday at Columbia University, where the school’s head introduced the hard-line leader by calling him a “petty and cruel dictator.”

Ahmadinejad portrayed himself as an intellectual and argued that his administration respected reason and science. But the former engineering professor, appearing shaken and irate over he called “insults” from his host, soon found himself drawn into the type of rhetoric that has alienated American audiences in the past.

a tectonic shift may have occurred. His denial that there are homosexuals in Iran has raced around the world media, and not in a good way.

He provoked derisive laughter by responding to a question about Iran’s execution of homosexuals by saying: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country … I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.”

The Los Angeles Times outright mocked him in their editorial:

That Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a real cutup. The Iranian president had a hostile crowd at Columbia University laughing and applauding Monday during a controversial appearance that prompted an outcry from thousands of protesters and attracted bipartisan criticism from presidential candidates. Of course, Ahmadinejad’s audience was mostly laughing at him rather than with him.

Even though the LA Times spent the rest of the editorial chastising those that would have prevented Ahmadinejad from speaking at Columbia, it still comes down on Mad Mahmoud.

Dana Milbank of the WaPo mocked Ahmadinejad too:

“For hundreds of years, we’ve lived in friendship and brotherhood with the people of Iraq,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the National Press Club yesterday.

That’s true — as long as you don’t count the little unpleasantness of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, when a million people died, some by poison gas. And you’d also have to overlook 500 years of fighting during the Ottoman Empire.

[…] “Our people are the freest people in the world,” said the man whose government executes dissidents, jails academics and stones people to death.

“The freest women in the world are women in Iran,” he continued, neglecting to mention that Iranian law treats a woman as half of a man.

“In our country,” judged the man who shuts down newspapers and imprisons journalists, “freedom is flowing at its highest level.”

And if you believe that, he has a peaceful civilian nuclear program he wants to sell you.

The WaPo’s news article was more balanced, but still an overall minus for Ahmadinejad:

Greeted by large protests and jabs from local politicians and U.S. presidential candidates, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced a public skewering Monday at the first stop of his three-day trip here: As he prepared to deliver a speech at Columbia University, the university’s president, Lee Bollinger, introduced the Iranian leader as a man who appeared to lack “intellectual courage,” had a “fanatical mind-set” and may be “astonishingly undereducated.”

[…] A leader known to live largely protected from criticism at home, Ahmadinejad appeared shocked and insulted. He chastised Bollinger for judging his speech before it had even begun and suggested that such a move was unforgivable in a university setting.

The New York Times is less able to see the humor in things, but still led their news article with this:

He said that there were no homosexuals in Iran — not one — and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, aired those and other bewildering thoughts in a two-hour verbal contest at Columbia University yesterday, providing some ammunition to people who said there was no point in inviting him to speak. Yet his appearance also offered evidence of why he is widely admired in the developing world for his defiance toward Western, especially American, power.

From the Times, that’s about as mean as they get to someone who is not a Republican. It’s New York Times Elitist speech for “Can you believe this jerk?” The WaPo found a New Yorker to say almost exactly that:

“Let him speak — let him open his mouth,” said Pearl Atkins, 74, a Manhattan resident who lost relatives in the Holocaust. “This is America; people get their say here, not like in Iran. He only makes himself sound more stupid with every word anyway.”

US News and World Report has a roundup of the various media reports of yesteday’s speech, noting essentially the same things as I wrote above. What remains to be determined is this: Did the speech come off as an overall propaganda plus for Ahmadinejad, or did he come off as a bigoted, anti-Semitic, anti-American, narrow-minded tool urging Islam as a solution to the world’s problems?

I think now that Gerard is right, and that Ahmadinejad made an ass of himself. We’ve seen him get mildly annoyed at reporters before, but he always stayed in control of the situation, and kept that infuriating grin on his face throughout. But that grin froze in place during much of yesterday’s speech, and you could see that at times, Ahmadinejad was barely controlling his rage.

He has never spoken in front of such a hostile audience, he has never had to answer such hostile questions in front of that audience, and he was never introduced in such a hostile manner. The fawning adulation of the National Press Club introductions and byplay were not repeated several hours later, rather, the opposite occurred. This man has been insulated from his critics to the point where he gets to shut down newspapers that mildly criticize him and his actions. But here in the U.S., he experienced true freedom of speech, and he didn’t care for what it feels like.

I think I’m going to have to reverse myself on this one. I was wrong. However, I think that the protests forced Bollinger to behave differently than he would have otherwise. I think that by proving he would ask the tough questions, Bollinger and SIPA went harder on Ahmadinejad than they would have done. And we do have some very damning clips to use against him for some time to come.

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14 Responses to Weighing the aftermath of Ahmadinejad’s Columbia speech

  1. Jack says:

    As far as I am concerned the jury is still out.

  2. Billy says:

    the audience was hardly hostile, they cheered many of the Iranian President’s comments.

    for example:
    “If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and are testing them already, what position are you in to question the peaceful purposes of other people who want nuclear power?

    We do not believe in nuclear weapons, period. It goes against the whole grain of humanity. ”

    (APPLAUSE)

    i wouldn’t call them supportive, but the audience WAS listening if the applause, laughter, and boos were any indication.

  3. Jimmie says:

    Overseas, his speech wasn’t seen as such a failure.

  4. Jimmie, when the Guardian leads with this:

    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, told Americans yesterday his country had no nuclear weapons programme, but then called his own credibility into question by insisting it had no gay people either.

    I think my point is made.

  5. Bill GC says:

    The private acceptance takes on a new dimension – it could be that in present day America most of the population lives in a fantasy world. I can only say: Travel , travel, travel – talk to people from other places. I’m born in Europe and after 8 years spent here – I still can believe the amount of propaganda that’s beeing fed to and asked for by the average American. This is not about Ahmadinejad beeing right – as he’s definitely not. This about America not beeing right either, or Europe or Asia. No one is – it’s about survival and the quality of survival. If 1 million has to die somewhere else so we can maintain our standard of living on this continent – it would be nice if mainstream media would leave the ugly details out. This is cowardice. Unfortunately that word doesn’t mean anything anymore. Everyone should try their best to use mind to explore the truth, instead of digesting news that can be used for social benefit.

  6. Bill GC says:

    The private acceptance takes on a new dimension – it could be that in present day America most of the population lives in a fantasy world. I can only say: Travel , travel, travel – talk to people from other places. I’m born in Europe and after 8 years spent here – I still can believe the amount of propaganda that’s beeing fed to and asked for by the average American. This is not about Ahmadinejad beeing right – as he’s definitely not. This about America not beeing right either, or Europe or Asia. No one is – it’s about survival and the quality of survival. If 1 million has to die somewhere else so we can maintain our standard of living, it’s better the main media should leave the messy details out of the story.

  7. Rajender Razdan says:

    OK. By now it should be crystal clear to even the most retarded leftists that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is another Hitler in the making. The question now is are WE (i.e. the non-muslim World) going to do anything about it, or are we going to continue looking the other way while he develops his nuclear capability?

  8. Samantha says:

    living in a pre-dominantly muslim country i can understand what he was saying and i mostly agree with his view point
    sadly however the western world does not, and will forever have a bias against iran and ahmedinijad for that matter so peace can not be brought about by these debates.
    infact it will only worsen situations where even president elects and serving mayors go on to insult a guest to their country. more hospitability should have been provided by the US to him in order to change his hardline views of israel and the denial of the holocaust
    anyways i think ahmedinijad attempt to try to instill some logical and realistic sense into the american public went against him

  9. Jimmie says:

    Meryl, I think you’re missing the point. The story isn’t the thing – the headline is. Look at those headlines and tell me that Bollinger’s criticism played more widely than Ahmadinejad’s craziest statements.

    More importantly, look at the two headlines I noted from the Iranian news services. That’s what the Iranian people – the ones who like us and whose support we’ll desperately need to topple that madman – are seeing today. Note the comment from Samantha (Samantha???) who evidently doesn’t know – or care – about Ahmadinejad’s bloody hands.

    Bollinger made an immense mistake having Ahmadinejad there. Today’s international news coverage more than amply proves that Mad Mahmoud won far more than he lost. And he did it at our expense again.

  10. Gary Rosen says:

    In the end, it was a lot of “sound and fury signifying nothing”. Out of 6 billion people on this planet, I suspect the number who changed their opinion of Ahmedinejad one way or the other was close to zero. I still wish Columbia had not invited him simply because that was the right thing to do. It would have expressed their distaste for this thug with a lot more dignity than yesterday’s spectacle.

  11. How Did Jew-Friendly Persia Become Anti-Semitic Iran?
    Muslim, but not Arab, Iran protected its Jews from the Holocaust, but now questions that it ever happened. Once one of Israel’s closest Muslim allies, it now seeks to wipe the “Zionist entity” off the map. Tens of thousands of its Jews have left, yet it still boasts the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country. In an in-depth cover story (Dec. 2006), Moment magazine asks:

    How Did Jew-Friendly Persia Become Anti-Semitic Iran?
    http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/2006/2006-12

  12. Say, Moment Magazine editor: That’s called spamming my comments thread. If you want to put up a comment like that, next time, you’d better email me first.

    I don’t take kindly to my comments being spammed.

  13. Jimmie, we were never going to make an impression on Iran. The media there is tightly controlled. Come to think of it, there’s no free media in any part of the Arab and Muslim world.

    Mind you, I’m not saying Bollinger was right to let the invitation stand. I think murderous dictators should not be given such a prestigious platform. But I think some negatives came out for Ahmadinejad that the Western world simply can’t continue to deny, especially his ridiculous insistence that homosexuals aren’t being executied in Iran because there are no homosexuals in Iran.

    It exposed him for the liar that he is, far better than any 60 Minutes report or NPC appearance.

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