On Monday’s news I watched a little of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia and too much of President Lee Bollinger’s introduction. Today I got around to reading the transcript, naturally not in search of enlightenment. To seek enlightenment in the speeches of presidents, whether of colleges or countries, is to go duck-hunting where no duck dwells.

Instead I wanted to be sure that the TV excerpts had fairly represented Lee Bollinger’s remarks, and they had. This was a disappointment, as the president of Columbia had earlier given hints of a certain testicular presence by approving Ahmadinejad’s appearance on his campus.

But of course this had stirred up a perfect storm of the squawking that, when Israel is on the agenda, greets the the most tentative deviation into sense. So now it was CYA time: after a nod in the direction of academic freedom Bollinger turned his introduction into an attack on his invited guest.

This was understandable but it was also unforgiveable. Sins against God, country, and the legal code are merely venial, while sins against good taste are mortal.

Once Bollinger was done with armoring his ass against further assault, Ahmadinejad took the mike and politely said:

At the outset, I want to complain a bit on the person who read this political statement against me. In Iran, tradition requires that when we demand a person to invite us as a — to be a speaker, we actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgment, and we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in — (applause) — with a series of claims and to attempt in a so-called manner to provide vaccination of some sort to our students and our faculty.

Another thing struck me while watching this small, slightly-built man take on a hostile crowd in a hostile city. Ahmadinejad — although every bit as despicable as such other enemies of the republic as King Abdullah, General Musharraf and Vice President Cheney — showed that he is at least no coward.

The Conqueror of Baghdad and the Lion of Guantánamo, by contrast, would have surrounded himself with a battalion of Blackwater mercenaries before running such a risk. Whenever G.I. George ventures out in public his aides even issue orders that he is to be protected from so much as a glimpse of an antiwar button on man, woman or child.

Any little thing from the reality-based world outside, they seem to fear, might pop their boss’s bubble.