News Jog 9/25/07

[Just one topic in today's News Jog- but it's a good one.]

The Jog would like to publicly thank Columbia University for hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and letting him speak his mind on their campus yesterday afternoon. The only way to dispel growing sympathies with dangerous charismatics on the world stage is to let them keep talking. It is easy to find support on college campuses for an anti-American message. The potent mixture of aging professors, who have long since found the real world has no need for their abstract noodlings, and young people, who are just finding out the history of the country is a bit more complicated than they were led to believe as children, will always foster a kind of cynicism that opens the door for knee-jerk sympathy with any declared enemy of the state.

It is easy for a wily propagandist like Ahmadinejad to mesmerize from thousands of miles away but he becomes much more human and fallible when standing right in front of idealistic college students. Being a good propaganda man the Iranian President softened his rhetoric for this trip to America. Sensing that most Americans are now disillusioned with Bush and his foreign policy he decided not to make the mistake Hugo Chavez made last year by insulting the American president so much that he ended up insulting everyone, even many prominent liberals. No, this is a new man with a new message this time around.

It may seem odd to most Americans that Ahmadinejad requested the right to lay a wreath at the site of Ground Zero but it makes perfect sense to the Jog. Why not attempt to win over more disciples in the U.S. by aligning himself even closer with their point of view. It's his way of saying, 'I hate Bush and I grieve for those lost on 9/11, just like you- see I'm not such a bad guy- we're not so different.'

The reason it's important to let this man speak as often as possible in this country is that he doesn't understand it enough to win the propaganda war so long as he is allowed to keep talking. As he kept speaking yesterday it was inevitable that he would say something, sooner or later, that would cause his young American admirers to think about finding someone else to fall in love with.

At the end of the day it wasn't the holocaust denying, the funding of terrorism around the world, or the threat to wipe Israel from the map that made young students and their older professors begin to rethink their opinions of the Iranian leader. They were more than willing to nod their heads in knowing ascent every time he asserted that these so-called opinions of his were taken out of context and used against him by the Bush administration and an alliance of Jewish groups. But when he stood before a group of liberal young minds and stated that Iran doesn't persecute homosexuals because homosexuals don't exist in Iran the way they do in this country- the laughter became audible, the eyes started rolling, and the scales began falling.

It isn't that the gay issue is the most important one in this debate but it is something real that his audience has a real-time understanding of. Enlightened people know that there are homosexuals in every culture. When Ahmadinejad denied that Iran had gays he had spoken just long enough to reveal to his audience that he was, in fact, full of shit. The Jog says let him continue speaking.

If only we could resuscitate 'Che' Guevera long enough to have him stand on a podium and explain to college students why he thought it necessary to kill any member of his rebel army that he suspected of being gay. Then finally- we could maybe get rid of those stupid t-shirts the hipsters look so cool in.

Ah- the Jog can dream.



Grinning Madman Ahmadinejad Squirms at Columbia

Un-Forum-Givable: Don't Help Propagandist

Teaching Moment