The Company You Keep

Well, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming to visit. He'll visit Columbia University, that has lower standards of tolerance than Dwight Eisenhower did. Much lower. Then he'll go and speak at the UN again. Which, as even the Associated Press admits, has been tolerant of some very, very intolerable people.

The show has been going on practically since the United Nations was founded in 1945 after World War II.

Soviet Premier Khrushchev banged his shoe on his desk after a diplomat criticized the U.S.S.R. in 1960. On his first visit to the U.N., in 1960, Castro warned the world about American "aggression" in a speech that lasted more than four hours.

Arafat came to the General Assembly in 1974 and delivered a fiery oration while wearing an empty holster, trying to legitimize the Palestinian struggle.

"I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun," Arafat said. "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hands."

A year later, the murderous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin exhorted the United States "to rid their society of the Zionists" and called for the "extinction of Israel as a state."

Last year, Venezuelan President Chavez called Bush "the devil," "an alcoholic" and "a sick man."

For his part, Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a "myth" and has said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

Mahmoud, Yassar and Idi. What a team, eh?

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  By Mike Volpe, September 23, 2007 @ 7:18 pm

  After Ahmadinejad speaks maybe they could invite Mugabe in to speak about economic development, then we can invite King Saud to speak about women’s rights, and for a trifecta we can bring Chirac in for a lecture about political courage.

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  By beth, September 23, 2007 @ 7:23 pm

  HA! Mike, I think you are on to something there!

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  By Gaius, September 23, 2007 @ 7:37 pm

  Hey, maybe they could get Fred Phelps to lecture about human decency, too.

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