A Spotlight In the Right Place

Dana Milbank for WaPo nails it:

Without listening to Ahmadinejad, how can the world appreciate how truly nutty he is?

Absolutely. As President Bush said yesterday, "an institution in our country gives him the chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country". Ahmadinejad's speeches tell us two things. First, he is not beholden to the truth (Milbank really gets into this). Second, he is not accustomed to the embarrassment of a free press. His means of dealing with hard questions is to flatly deny the accusations - even when we have video of him saying the opposite in a Farsi news conference!

So accustomed to being worshiped and so unaccustomed to being questioned, he really stands to lose whatever scant credibility as a critic of America he formerly had.

Ahmadinejad has also stolen a page or two from Borat's script:

Borat: "You telling me the man who try to put a rubber fist in my anus was a homosexual?" (src)
Mahmoud: "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country"

Borat: "Democracy is different in America. For example: women can vote but horse can not!"
Mahmoud: "The freest women in the world are women in Iran."

Borat: "Although Kazakhstan a glorious country, it have a problem, too: economic, social, and Jew."
Mahmoud: "It is quite clear that a bunch of Zionist racists are the problem the modern world is facing today". (src)

Borat: [narrating] "He insist we not fly in case the Jews repeated their attack of 9/11."
Mahmoud: "If the root causes of 9/11 are examined properly - why it happened, what caused it, what were the conditions that led to it, who truly was involved, who was really involved..." (src).

Borat's chorus: "Kazakhstan friend of all except Uzbekistan"
Mahmoud: "For hundreds of years, we've lived in friendship and brotherhood with the people of Iraq."

I could go on.