…at least according to this ad:

My favourite is the lady in the evening gown at the end. The look of misery behind the big smile is epic.

Once upon a time, universities were places of learning, of discovery, where young minds were molded into the visionary leaders of tomorrow. Now, they are cheap venues for bashing foreign heads of state you find objectionable.

Hot off the heels of Columbia University’s throwdown on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ferdowsi University in northern Iran has invited President Bush to speak. They’d like him to answer questions on the Holocaust, terrorism, human rights and U.S. foreign policy in the same way Ahmadinejad did, “despite all the insults directed at him”. Interesting that they basically front-ended the fact that they plan to insult Bush a la Bollinger.

The White House response was predictable:

“President Bush looks forward to traveling to a democratic Iran, an Iran where its leaders allow freedom of speech and assembly for all of its people and an Iran where the leaders mourn the victims of the Holocaust, not call for the destruction of Israel.”

Oh, Snap!

Seriously, this whole thing is a bit juvenile. While the ‘sticks and stones’ academic tour may pull the column inches, it’s a bit beneath universities in any part of the world.

Not exactly breaking news, I know. But it bears repeating.

On the September 25 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, O’Reilly made the following illuminating comment about Darfur:

“Darfur is the left cause. They see the evil there and want to confront it, yet they don’t want the evil confronted in the Islamic world. That’s a very interesting situation. Now, Darfur is a disgrace, and that is Islamic driven. It’s the same soup, but because people of color are being slaughtered and harmed in Darfur, the left is on the bandwagon. Interesting, isn’t it?”

Rush Limbaugh, no less the douchebag, made a similar comment on his show:

“[The Democrats] want to get us out of Iraq, but they can’t wait to get us into Darfur. There are two reasons. What color is the skin of the people in Darfur? It’s black. And who do the Democrats really need to keep voting for them? If they lose a significant percentage of this voting bloc, they’re in trouble.”

So, both Limbaugh and O’Reilly seem to believe the left is only interested in Darfur, and then only because the population is black. They are disinterested in Iraq, it follows, because the people being slaughtered are white. I’m not sure what war they’ve been watching, but the vast, vast number of casualties in the ‘War on Terror’ have been Iraqi, Afghani, or otherwise ‘not white’. Due largely to their tiny brains, LImbaugh and O’Reilly draw a distinction where there is none to be made. Progressives want to intervene in Darfur to prevent the slaughter of innocent people. Progressives want to leave Iraq for precisely the same reason…to stop the slaughter of innocent people.

Say nothing of the fact that Limbaugh and O’Reilly’s invocation of race is extremely distasteful. Two for one, boys: stupid and racist.