After last night’s little soirée, you can add Brian Williams and Christiane Amanpour to ol’ Mahmoud’s DayTimer in the “Useful Idiots” section. Time Magazine reports:

The invitation was on creamy stationery with fancy calligraphy: The Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran “requests the pleasure” of my company to dine with H.E. Dr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The dinner is at the Intercontinental Hotel — with names carefully written out at all the place settings around a rectangular table. There are about 50 of us, academics and journalists mostly. There’s Brian Williams across the room, and Christiane Amanpour a few seats down. And at a little after 8pm, on a day when he has already addressed the U.N., the evening after his confrontation at Columbia, a bowing and smiling Mahmoud Admadinejad glides into the room.

This is now an annual ritual for the President of Iran. Every year, during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, he plots out a media campaign that — in its shrewdness, relentlessness, and quest for attention — would rival Angelina Jolie on a movie junket. And like any international figure, Mr. Ahmadinejad hones his performance for multiple audiences: in this case, the journalists and academics who can filter his speech and ideas for a wider American audience.

In the same issue Time writer Tony Karon makes it clear just how much was gained by Iran and its Tehran-thug of a president.

The Cheshire Cat smile worn by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his address at Columbia University on Monday was no surprise — the event was a resounding victory for the Iranian President. Of course, students and faculty in the hall jeered many of his comments, while protestors outside denounced him as the new Hitler. And Columbia University president Lee Bollinger — clearly stung by criticism of the institution for hosting Ahmadinejad — used his introduction to excoriate the Iranian leader as everything from a “cruel and petty dictator” to “astonishingly uneducated.” But all of this was merely grist for Ahmadinejad. The furor it had created ensured that what might have passed as a relatively obscure address in a small Ivy League auditorium turned into a national media event, in which the Iranian President had the microphone, unmolested, for the best part of an hour.

Amazing! Anyone out there that still doesn’t get it?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 4:21 pm and is filed under A Post 9/11 World, Iran Threat, Media Doin' It Wrong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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