Listening to Ahmadinejad is maddening. He may be a violent and hostile monster, but unfortunately he’s not stupid. He exceeded expectations—which is what we call winning these days. He did not drool nor did fire shoot from his eyes. He didn’t rant in a loud voice nor stutter incoherently. He argued. He deflected. He distorted. He ducked the questions asked and answered as his wished. He turned every pointed question into a pointed counter-attack. In other words, he acted like a normal politician.

The reason he was a Columbia was to ah, well, uh. I’m not really sure. From his viewpoint it was to have a platform for propaganda, a place to talk to the American people. Yet more importantly, Columbia gave him a place to stand up to America in front of the Muslim World. It worked for his purposes. Columbia’s president Lee Bollinger was no match for his rhetoric and half-truths.

More interesting than Ahmadinejad’s rhetorical points and Bollinger’s utter ineptitude (embarrassing!) was the audience’s reaction. They applauded statements about the rights of the Palestinians. They sat still for his utter evasions concerning the shipment of arms to Iraq. The only time they reacted negatively was when he denied that there are gay people in Iran. Then there was laughter and hoots of derision and disbelief. Apparently denying the Holocaust is one thing but you better not deny the existence of gay people. Why one lie and willful denial doesn’t trigger the legal concept of “false in one, false in all,” I don’t know.

What our interest was in giving him this platform is hard to know. I guess, as the head of Columbia (the university not the country) Bollinger said it was not about Ahmadinejad’s freedom to speak but our freedom to hear. This was the one piece of solid rhetoric from our side—the side of democracy and decency. While Columbia’s prez tried vainly to inoculate himself from further scorn—and loss of funds—by attacking Ahmadinejad, this only made us look petty and weak.

Among the many things that our society doesn’t understand about both the Arab World and the Muslim World is the law of hospitality. You do not invite someone into your home, whether palace or tent, and attack or discomfort your guest. It is rude, wrong and makes you look bad. The tape and translation of this betrayal of the rules of hospitality, though a factually accurate bill of indictment, will be played all over the world. It will do us harm.

I guess Columbia thought that being liberal means having no discretion what so ever. The moron and chief said that were Hitler available, he would invite him. I suppose the one thing to be said for that kind of lack of taste or judgment is that Hitler would probably not be a Holocaust denier.

There is no freedom of speech issue involved in this in any reasonable or legal way. Ahmadinejad has every right to speak, to lie to print and publish anything he wants. But there is no duty to give him a platform.

I can write anything I want. No one is forced to publish me. Darn. There is no duty, legal or moral, that the Daily News or Friendly Fire has to disseminate my work. It is done at their absolute discretion.

Freedom of speech involves the government’s right to stop or censor what I say. Hell, I’d like a column every day. A radio show would be nice. TV even better. I’d also like that script that’s been sitting in my file drawer to be bought and shot—preferably by Spielberg. I think I’ll sue to get someone to do it. Oh, yeah. Never mind, this is the basic theory of Dan Rather’s suit against CBS. I’ll just wait and see how this works out for him.

The bottom line is that neither Hitler nor Ahmadinejad should be welcomed to our universities. It should not be against the law of the land—only the law of decency.