Here is a sampling of reports and commentaries this morning in New York City’s newspapers and from leading New Yorkers about Ahmadinejad:
Today’s New York Daily News’ cover:
From a New York Daily News editorial entitled Columbia Unredeemed:
Bollinger felt the pressure only because he had welcomed a man who had no business on campus. He should have shown his revulsion far more effectively by declaring that Ahmadinejad was not deserving of a platform at Columbia, a university whose principles stand for everything Ahmadinejad is not. And, in the end, Bollinger’s attempt to justify Ahmadinejad’s appearance as a learning experience was decidedly hollow.
The Iranian droned about truth and goodness and God as if he were on LSD, then held to well-established propaganda. His poisonous falsehoods were depressingly familiar. Among them: Israel is endlessly guilty of murdering men, women and children; 9/11 was an inside job; the Holocaust never happened.
Mike Ramirez, cartoonist for the Investor’s Business Daily, painted a picture of Ahmadinejad’s real reason for wanting to visit Ground Zero for the New York Post today.
John Podhoretz, New York Post columnist:
And speaking of the Holocaust or lack thereof, Iran is “friends with the Jewish people,” who are treated just wonderfully by the Iranian regime and “many Jews live in peace and security” inside Iran. Ahmadinejad evidently defines friendship a bit differently from most other people, since last year he asked whether Jews were even “human beings,” and answered his own question by comparing them to livestock.
Rudy Giuliani, in a New York Post article:
“Even though the president of Columbia introduced him with an insult, he just responded with an insult … Ahmadinejad comes away from it saying, ‘Sure there are people there that don’t like me and opposed me and booed me, but hey, there were an awful lot of people there that applauded for me, too. So I have some support there.'”
Grinning madman Ahmadinejad squirms at Columbia — New York Daily News headline, 9/25/2007
New York Sun editorial, 9/25/2007:
We don’t have any illusions about what Mr. Ahmadinejad will take away from his visit to Morningside Heights. Looking cinereal he sat smirking in the shadows at stage rear during Mr. Bollinger’s introduction. But the bursts of applause he received from what appeared to be a conflicted audience of Columbia’s leftist student body and faculty will be broadcast at home, along with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s sneering and lying responses on everything from the A-bomb to the Holocaust to the war his country is fighting by proxy against our own and Israel. That will be a gift to him that keeps on giving.
Last, least, and ever trite, here is a headline in the New York Times…
…and a few words from their editorial:
“…we are dismayed by the behavior of some of New York’s democratically elected representatives who denounced and threatened Columbia University for inviting the Iranian leader to speak there yesterday.”
Yet the Times wins the Best Picture of a Crowd of Columbia Students award:
