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Breaking: No Queers in Persia

Forget Lee Bollinger's rather tepid remarks introducing Columbia's big-name guest speaker. ("Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator" exhibits all the signs of what linguists call hedging and Orwell would have called euphemism.) Here's the real corker from Mahmoud's speech:

Asked about widely documented government abuse of women and homosexuals in his country, Ahmadinejad said, "We don't have homosexuals" in Iran. "I don't know who told you we had it," he said.

In college, I was in a play called Metropolitan, which I adapted from Whit Stillman's movie of the same name. In one scene, a character tells my character: "You're a snob, a sexist, totally obnoxious, and tiresome. And lately, you've gotten just weird. Why should we believe anything you say?" My character replies: "I'm not tiresome."

Mahmoud's reply is shocking and ridiculous on its face. But hey, at least he implicitly concedes the abuse of women.

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