ahmadinejad? whatevs.

If you live in New York, you certainly know about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit today, which most notably includes speaking at Columbia University. Lots of protesters are gathering throughout the next few days at the U.N. and Morningside Heights, with positions ranging from "How dare an American university invite this Holocaust denier and autocratic ruler to speak" to "Iran should abandon its nuclear ambitions" to "ISRAEL FOREVER, SUCKA!!!"

Believe me, the sight of Ahmadinejad's slightly simian visage fills me with revulsion. This man is power-hungry, greedy, and manipulates his citizen's basest prejudices to compensate for his economic weaknesses, to say nothing of the Holocaust denial and the threatening of Israel.

But I wouldn't protest him today. Why? First of all, he's in the U.S. looking for attention. Any kind of attention. Anything that will demonstrate that he is a powerful man who intimidates the government of the powerful Great Satan, making him a fearsome leader in the Middle East.

Second of all, what exactly might we protest now? His right to speak at an American university? Well, that's a bit counterproductive for demonstrating the values of an open democracy (Indeed, Iran can counter that it too is nominally a democracy, but when the candidates are vetted and the votes tallied by cleric-ocrats, that claim becomes null and void). Iran's nuclear ambitions? According to them, there are no nuclear weapons, only energy sources. His desire to destroy Israel? He only waves that flag to, again, get attention and consolidate his influence in the region, and to distract his own supporters, generally the urban poor, to, uh, forget that they're still poor.

People are still gonna go after this guy because of our visceral distaste for the guy. He's like the Voldemort of world leaders (hint: could a uranium enrichment faciity itself be a Horcrux?)