Goldstein of the Week

Yes, once again George Orwell must be somewhere laughing - or crying - or both. On the heels of al-Qaeda's fall season video premiers over the last couple of weeks. including "Tora Bora Martyr Makeover", the media and assorted local New York and national political 'leaders' have turned their collective blood-lust onto a new target- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Case in point:

Ahmadinejad announced last week that he wanted to visit ground zero, ostensibly to lay a wreath to honor the dead. The dead that he thinks were killed by a Zionist conspiricy, of course. I was of the opinion that he should've been allowed there, however surrounded by a few dozen members of the Ironworkers local, some off duty members of 'NYs finest' and a few guys from a half dozen FDNY ladder companies to boot. My guess is if he was stupid enough to go into his 'America is Satan' schtick at that point, he would've been choking on his own teeth after about ten seconds. Maybe these were the 'security concerns' that officials cited last week in their denial of his request.

That said, I think all the haters need to take a deep breath. If an auditorium full of Columbia undergrads and graduate students can't intellectually slice up this guy nine ways to Sunday, then we may have a bigger problem than we think. Actually, excluding the Holocaust denying, the Israel map wiping off and the Zionist 9/11 conspiricy stuff, this guy makes some valid points. Really, what has he said that was any more idiotic than "they want to take away our freedom"? Uhhh, no George, I don't think they give a shit about our freedom, and besides, they're not taking it away, YOU ARE! Not to mention making a holy f#*king mess out of everything you touch.

What gets a lot less play is that Ahmadinejad may actually be worse at running Iran than Bush is at running our country. Despite sky-high oil prices, employment is down in Iran, poverty is up, there is more underground unrest and the government is much less secular than in recent years - oops, my mistake - I guess we'll call that last one even.

(the style of this post inspired by JS, BM and of course HST)