Intro for a petty, cruel dictator

After watching a television clip of that bizarre hawg wrassle in New York City earlier this week featuring the President of Columbia University versus the President of Iran, I thought, well, you can say one thing for the academic: He sure knows how to introduce an invited guest to make him feel right at home.

Future masters of ceremonies will surely be hard-pressed to top Columbia president Lee Bollinger’s memorable introduction of Iran’s loose-cannon president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”

It was a great line, albeit one that might reasonably have been mistaken as having been crafted for delivery at one of those insipid celebrity roasts that once were all the rage with The Beautiful People. Egghead educator trashes foreign despot, all proceeds to go to despot’s favorite charity.

A celebrity was getting roasted, all right. But this was the real deal. None of that smarmy kiss-and-makeup stuff afterward to mitigate any offense that may have been accidentally rendered.

Ahmadinejad’s kooky denial of the Holocaust might fool the illiterate and ignorant, but certainly not any rational person, Bollinger lectured. “When you come to a place like this, it makes you simply ridiculous … you are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated,” he told the hard-line Iranian leader, apparently following some new guideline that counsels if you can’t say something bad about a person you are welcoming, you should say nothing at all.

And then he relinquished the microphone to his guest. Your move, Mahmoud, old chap. Good luck. And do remember to acknowledge your gracious host’s kind introduction in your opening remarks.

As I’m sitting there taking in all this, it occurred to me that something was wrong with this picture. Was not Bollinger the man ultimately responsible for inviting the “petty and cruel dictator” to address his student body? Was someone holding a gun to his head when the invitation was extended? Or had it merely seemed like a swell idea at the time, but less so now, in the face of mounting criticism? If this was the way the inviter would present the invitee to his audience, how might the crowd who wouldn’t have been caught dead issuing the invitation have handled the intro?

Ahmadinejad suggested that the introduction was “an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience.” There were, he said, “many insults and claims that were incorrect, regretfully.” Which means, I suppose, that some of the insults were right on the mark. In any case, Columbia’s invited guest said he should not begin his speech “by being affected by this unfriendly treatment.” There would be no hex cast upon his host for bad manners. No incantation beseeching the offspring of 10,000 sand fleas to infest the presidential knickers.

Answering questions following his speech, however, Ahmadinejad was the same old wild and crazy guy, questioning the accepted version of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, defending his right to cast doubt on the Holocaust, and, to hoots of derisive laughter, declaring that “in Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. …”

Bollinger was widely criticized for inviting the controversial Iranian leader to speak at Columbia, although not by President Bush, who told a news reporter that if Bollinger considered the deal to be an educational experience for Columbia students, “I guess it’s OK with me.” He said Ahmadinejad’s appearance at the university “speaks volumes about the greatness of America” in respect to freedom of speech.

Others weren’t so charitable. “There’s a world of difference between not preventing Ahmadinejad from speaking, and handing a megalomaniac a megaphone and a stage to use it,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

“We’re here today to send a message that there is never a reason to give a hatemonger an open stage,” said New York City Councilor Christine Quinn, who participated in a rally near the United Nations headquarters to protest Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York. Thank God that old saw about how freedom of speech does not include the right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater was unavailable, having died from overwork. May it rest in peace.

The dustup served to remind that freedom of speech can be a tricky concept, especially when it comes to deciding who gets the stage to spout his cockamamie theories and half-baked suppositions, and who gets the hook. We all have our ideas about where the line between free speech and something ugly is to be drawn.

But to go there on such a fine Saturday morning could be a bit of a yawner, so I won’t.

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone. Readers may contact him via e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.