Civility and the L.A. Times
L.A. Times columnist Rosa Brooks has an odd take on the Columbia-Ahmadinejad story:
Ahmadinejad was playing to global public opinion, and though he lost some PR points for incoherence and general bizarreness of message ("In Iran, we don't have homosexuals"), he gained some for coming off as a bit more mature than his prissy, infantile host. ("In Iran, when you invite a guest, you respect them," Ahmadinejad observed dryly.)Bollinger, meanwhile, was playing to a different audience. After taking a beating for giving Ahmadinejad a forum, he was eager to show the media, alumni, concerned Jewish organizations and a raft of bellicose neoconservative pundits that he was no terrorist-loving appeaser of Holocaust deniers.
In a narrow sense, both Ahmadinejad and Bollinger achieved their goals. Ahmadinejad showed that he could be dignified in the face of crass American bullies..... And Bollinger showed that he can be a crass American bully, which, in our current political climate, is what passes for "courage."
So far I have no serious disagreement. As I noted a few days ago, it was poor form for Bollinger to invite Ahmadinejad into his house only to spit on him. But according to Brooks, this would have been OK if Bollinger had only chosen to mistreat a different president:
(I)f Bollinger had invited President Bush to Columbia and made those same unvarnished remarks to him, and Bush had toughed it out and struggled to answer half a dozen unfiltered, critical questions from an audience not made up of his handpicked supporters . . . . Well, that ... would have been free speech at its best.
So if you're rude to Iran's genocidal tyrant, you are "prissy, infantile" and "a crass American bully." But if you're rude to the president of the United States, well, that's "free speech at its best."
Bush Derangement Syndrome strikes again.
yup, I noticed this opinion outrage, too, and I'm not even close to supporting Bush, his Iraq policy or being a Republican or conservative.
But this sort of "Whatever any other tyrant in the world does America and Bush -- or any leader to the right of Castro or Chavez -- is just as bad" drives me nuts and gives fodder to our enemies. It's so easy for people around the world to reprint stories like this one, and to add that, as a person of color, she of course tells the "truth" which is what our haters around the world know to be true, by coincidence.
I DO think the Columbia President was a fool for giving the Arab world (and others) a photo op -- many ignorant, uneducated people will just see a rude, maybe Jewish American attacking a smiling, courteous Iranian Muslim. You'd have to actually listen to his comments from a reasonably balanced/ educated point of view to know he's nuts, but millions of poor Muslims will just see the superficial aspects of this.
I have visited several Muslim countries myself, including Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian areas of Israel, and in the first two especially, have to testify that Arab hospitality (which isn't the same as Muslim, by the way -- it's a tribal thing that transcends religion, stemming from offering your hospitality in a formerly inhospitable, desert part of the world)), any guest is treated with courtesy while he's in your "home."
Especially if he's invited.
The Columbia nerd should have let Ahmen. talk, THEN he could have commented on it, and it would have had a lot more impact to say something like, "You say you have no gays, because your critics say that you ===" fill in the blanks.
He did a good job of hanging himself, but after the rude introduction, his own guest-martyr status was set in the mind of many.