Refreshing to see that Columbia University’s president, Lee Bollinger, today introduced Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a “petty and cruel dictator.” His goal was not to embrace Iran’s president but to “confront the mind of evil.” Ahmadinejad was hoping — and, indeed, has grown accustomed to — better hosts. Shocked but still smiling, he lamented Columbia’s “unfriendly treatment,” saying that Persian tradition requires that human beings be treated with respect. Except, of course, for political dissidents, women, and homosexuals. But I’m getting ahead of myself. “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country,” Ahmadinejad explained. The laughter of thousands of Columbia students floated across South Lawn, where a big screen had been set up to accomodate the ovserpill. It was natural, I suppose, that the tragic truth of Ahmadinejad’s statement was not registered: Homosexuals do not exist in Iran because Iran routinely hangs homosexuals.
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Robert Stacy McCain has been live-blogging media responses to the event at The Washington Times.
New York, NY—I sneezed in the subway train to Brooklyn on the morning of September 11, and I half-expected someone to say, “Bless you.” The train was packed as ever, but a reverent silence soaked in the air. It would probably have been the same in 2002 (the year after) or 2006 (the fifth anniversary). Except I like to think someone would’ve said, “Bless you.” But it was September 11, 2007. It was not a special day; it was a good day to forget.
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Baby Please Don’t Go (Published in Liberty Magazine as “Love Song”)
“Was it he, or she, reaching out arms and trying to hold or to be held, and clasping nothing but empty air?” – Ovid, Metamorphoses
He saw a lot of strange things on tour. He’d seen a happy clown. He’d even seen a sad widow. Bobby Lipp looked out from the stage over the casino as the thunderous applause from six people sitting below him died down.
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I just had to get rid of the flashing red light on the telephone, so I decided to listen to the past tenant’s 19 undeleted messages. There was a frantic call from a girl who’d left her cellphone somewhere in the sheets; she wanted it back. There were “very important” announcements from the technology center. Then there were kind voices who talked about how “double discovery changed my life.” Asked another: “Do you want to teach a kid how to read?” Probably the worst start to any message I’ve heard was here, too: “In 399 BCE….” Ironically, this was the one that attracted me most and got me ready for The Apology of Socrates to be performed tonight.
It just occurred to me — and internet archives now sadly verify –that the play will not happen tonight. It began and ended on the 6th of September last year. There is a definite sadness in the room. It’s as if I’ve been denied my inheritance. Even the red light has stopped blinking, and now I want it back. I take solace only in the fantasy that the past tenant, in the ignorant chaos of these messages, found some charm in ”399 BCE,” heard the message out, and went to the show in my place.
My article on the Anti-Defamation League’s recent recognition of the Armenian Genocide appears in this month’s Armenian Observer in Los Angeles and Noah’s Ark in Yerevan. I’m pasting it below.
NEW YORK—There is something sad, even tragic in the Anti-Defamation League’s recent recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It has, I suppose, to do with the fact that the ADL’s August 21 statement had almost nothing to do with the Genocide. The statement was issued, in its own first words, “in light of the heated controversy” and “because of our concern for the unity of the Jewish population.”
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