That's just me, though, it would appear. Just about everyone else in the blogosphere is talking about that one. What's not getting enough attention, in my mind, is Scott Adams' nearly anti-Semetic diatribe about Ahmadinejad. At first, when I read it, I wondered if it was just me being a bit over-sensitive, as I spent a number of years working for a Rabbi, and my anti-Jew-language radar is fairly finely tuned. I forwarded it to my favorite NoCal Jew (without citing the author) for comment. This was his response:
could be [Muslim-apologist, or anti-Semetic], sounds like an angry arab college kid who feels disenfranchised in the us vs. them set-up of affairs in the middle east. His arguments miss alot of important points about Ahmadinejad.I'm going to send you over to the original blog post to read, but I want you to come back and comment... but before I send you there, I want to explain what I feel is fairly obvious (despite several folks on the web who are seemingly missing this)... the article is written tongue-in-cheek. He's not writing from the perspective of someone who is anti-Iran... he's trying to display what he feels is the absurdity of the arguments against letting the president of a terrorist state speak freely in America.
OK. Go read it and come back.
Now here comes the part where I anticipate some of your comments and attempt to preemptively respond.
Q: Uh...did we just read the same thing? Where is the antisemitism?
A: First of all, the whole thing is written tongue in cheek. Secondly, in that context, he's defending the idea that there was no holocaust. As well as defending the re-definition of Ahmadinejad's destroy Israel comments.
Q: Did you read what he wrote after that?
A: Yes, but he's re-writing history based on comments he's received. If I were to believe that post, I'd have to ignore what he previously wrote.
Q: Well, if you want to get upset over a cartoonist, go ahead man.
A: Point being, he's a widely read blogger. As widely read as any other political or technical commentarian. Doesn't matter how he got there. I drew cartoons for my high school newspaper and yearbook. It's how I got my start in Journalism. Doesn't mean what I have to say means any less or more. It's incidental.
Q: And assuming I ascribe to your preset terms of him being widely read, I suppose that would make him mainstream .. and if he is mainstream, why does this surprise you?
A: I don't think you're paying attention then.
Q: I am.
A: No, follow my reasoning a second. Last week, Daily Kos admits basically hating the troops. Hillary is on the verge of being publicly revealed as a ponzi-schemer in a way that can't be denied. And today, a leading left political and tech blogger basically says that Iran and Ahmadinejad are cool in his book. It's the grand unveiling of true left motivations happening all around us. They can't keep up the masquerade any longer. Its not that all the folks that are against the war are anti-American, but that a lot of those that form liberal agenda engage in very wrong-headed thinking.
Essentially, the emperor has no clothes, and they finally can't deny it anymore. My hope is that by drawing attention to this fact, it will cause folks to re-examine why they think a lot of what they think rather than follow the herd of liberal thought.
As I'm writing this, Mahmood Aquavelva is at Columbia University, speaking to America. I don't believe that we should have let the head of a terrorist state even into the country, regardless give him an open platform to speak.
No, let me amend that. The man is head of a state that regularly sends folks to Israel to blow up themselves in Israel in the efforts to kill innocent Israeli citizens. We should put this guy in Gitmo, and put a Justin.TV cap on him, and let him pontificate from a jail cell.
I'm shocked by a couple things, as I've watched and listened to Mahmood Aquavelva and the crowd at Columbia. First of all, the President of Columbia has not once tried to get Mahmood Aquavelva to actually answer a question, and let him just meander all over the place with his answers. In so meandering, Mahmood Aquavelva has denied the holocaust, he has denied wanting WMDs, he has denied calling for the destruction of Israel, and he has denied that Israel has a right to exist (by way of saying that the Palestinians are correct in their desire to destroy Israel), and he denied that homosexuals exist at all in Iran.
The only thing that attracted boo's from the crowd was that homosexuals don't exist in Iran.
The other thing that shocked me is that there was an actual PRO-America protest outside the Columbia proceedings today.
In watching the proceedings, it occurred to me: why can't we tase Mahmood Aquavelva until he starts making sense. We do that for college students. Why not visiting dignitaries?
Just a thought on Columbia's (and University of Florida's) commitment to 'free speech.'
/rizzn
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