Bollinger Feels Liberal Backlash

RUSH: Have you seen the stories, all the backlash, now at Lee Bollinger because he was rude to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? In the New York Sun today: ”Backlash Against Bollinger Hits Columbia.’ A backlash against the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, who on Monday delivered a harsh rebuke to President Ahmadinejad, is coming from faculty members and students who said he struck an ‘insulting tone’ and that his remarks amounted to ‘schoolyard taunts.’ The fierceness of Mr. Bollinger’s critique bought the Iranian some sympathy on campus that he didn’t deserve, the critics said, and amounted to a squandered opportunity to provide a lesson in diplomacy.’ This misses the point. Ed Koch has a piece today that talks about Bollinger was rude, you don’t invite somebody into your house and treat them this way, you don’t invite them to your school, but his main gripe was that Bollinger forgot to stand up for the US. He stood up for Israel but he didn’t question Mahmoud’s assertion he wanted to wipe America off the map, too. Death to America, death to America!

There are others running around saying it was bad, it was horrible, you don’t invite somebody in and treat them rudely like that. Everybody is missing the point. If you want to feel that way, I can understand if you have manners and culture, but that’s not the point of this. Again, the point of this is the invitation should never have been given. Mahmoud was going to have media access all through his trip. He’s a star to the Drive-By Media. Hell, last night Mahmoud, or maybe it was the night before, I’m not sure which, threw a dinner party for 50 academics and journalists over at the Intercontinental Hotel. You ought to read in TIME Magazine the glowing report, the glowing review of Mahmoud: he’s brilliant, he’s fierce, he’s articulate, he’s everything Bush isn’t. He refused to take questions. He did allow people to make statements to which he would respond. You could say what you wanted, but you couldn’t ask any questions. It’s a coveted invitation from his excellency, the president of Iran, the Islamic Republic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (interruption) Whether he did at the dinner or not, we’ve got more side-by-sides coming up of Mahmoud and Democrats saying the identical things. But he’s still on the warpath.

I want to go back to this Bollinger business before we let this go. Who is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? As a human being — forget his title — who is he as a human being? He is a man who orders his opponents to be imprisoned, tortured, and killed. He is a man who wants Israel wiped off the map and is predicting that it’s going to happen, and that he’s going to be the one to do it. We all know that his country and he participate and allow the stoning of women who look the wrong way out of the burqa. We know that he executes homosexuals when they’re uncovered. Wait ’til you hear when we get the audio sound bites, he was asked a question by a reporter about gays. Well, I’ll just tell you. He said, ‘We really don’t have that phenomenon.’ Reporter says, ‘Well, I know some that are there.’ And Mahmoud asks the reporter for their address so he can learn about this phenomenon that he didn’t think is going on in Iran. So who is this guy? The guy is a state terrorist. He’s a state sponsor of terrorism, and we’re worried that he was treated rudely. I can understand that some people might think this. But we’re missing the point here.

Once again, we’re focusing on ourselves. It’s all about us and were we polite or not, and are we doing the right thing, are we making the world like us. Screw that! We’re dealing with a situation like we’re in with international terrorism threatening our existence. In addition to that, the whole platform was nothing more than a propaganda thing for Mahmoud. I guarantee you, he doesn’t care he was treated rudely. He might say so, because he knows how to court Americans who have this, ‘I wonder what they think of me today? I wonder what they think of us?’ Of course he’s going to say that, but Mahmoud clearly enjoyed the opportunity for propaganda back to his targeted audience in the Middle East. It’s still undecided and he’s denying it, but he might have been one of the original terrorists that was involved in the kidnapping and holding of the American hostages during the Carter administration.

There’s photographic evidence that places Mahmoud at the embassy. He, of course, has denied this. I don’t know. I think that when you look at the invitation, why Bollinger did what he did, we could go nuts analyzing this from our perspective. ‘Oh, so rude.’ Yeah, I have no doubt that Bollinger’s treatment of Mahmoud aided and abetted his propaganda and created sympathy for him. But is what Bollinger said untrue? Does it pass the truth test? What he said was true. I think that’s what some people are having trouble dealing with, not all, but they just didn’t want to hear it, makes them uncomfortable, confrontation wasn’t necessary. Invite this guy to your academic institution, and you thus convey upon him the status of a scholar. The whole thing should never have happened, because Mahmoud was going to get his media circus whether he went to Columbia university or not.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, let me make this point. One of the things I said about Bollinger is, ‘What did he say that was untrue? What did Lee Bollinger say that was untrue, ladies and gentlemen?’ You see, it made me think about something. I am routinely, by people who never have listened to this program, I am routinely tarred and feathered as impolite, racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobe, all the cliches. Some of the people who have listened to the program, and who offer incessant personal-attack criticism, I think do so because the truth is now considered to be impolite.

In a world of political correctness, ladies and gentlemen, where everybody must be guarded about what they say, must ask ourselves, ‘Well, would it be improper to say what I really think? What if it offends somebody? I shall shut up. I shall thus silence myself, and I will not run the risk of offending anybody.’ And so the truth often gets suppressed. Well, as you know, ladies and gentlemen, I don’t describe to PC, I love the truth, and I love hearing myself articulate the truth. As such, I think, in our carefully controlled, and in our we-don’t-want-to-be-hurt, we- don’t-want-to-be-offended, we-don’t-want-to-be-offensive society, we’re always censoring ourselves because this is a slow and building process called political correctness, which is essentially censorship. I think the truth is now part of PC. You can’t say the truth if you hurt somebody’s feelings. You can’t say the truth, because it’s going to be thought of as rude to be so honest and truthful .

When there is a fact, when there is a truth out there that the libs don’t like, especially a fact or truth that refutes their lives, that they can’t bat down any other way, they guilt everybody into shutting the hell up. So truth becomes a casualty, truth is impolite, truth is offensive. When we have truth on our side, we need to stop letting them get away with feeling us into being quiet. Now, this reaction that everybody is getting, or having to Bollinger, is missing the point. He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. And to whom did he say it? It wasn’t the chairman of the local garden club that came in there for a lecture. But, see, we don’t even want to admit the truth of who Ahmadinejad is, some of us, because admitting the truth of who Ahmadinejad is might cause us to have to take it seriously, and I’d rather be first in line at Blockbuster on Friday night than have to deal with this sort of stuff. So I think that’s one of the factors here in all of this backlash. I realize that some of you, genuinely because of your manners and your upbringing, think it was a rude thing to do. I still think that having that as a primary reaction to what happened up there is missing the point.