We're all collecting nuts for winter

I don’t get why Americans are so bewildered by the president of a big country beings so ridiculously mistaken, so lame-brained, so smug and such an all-around disagreeable schmuck.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn’t create his farcical personality from scratch, he simply based it on George W. Bush and Co.
Americans were nearly rolling in the aisles earlier this week when Ahmadinejad starting spewing his personalized brand of lunacy at Columbia University. We all wondered how Iranian citizens keep a straight face when he launches into craziness about the Holocaust being staged or women liking the way they’re abused in Iran.
It’s not so funny when Bush and Dick Cheney parade around the world that the problem of greenhouse gas emissions and “alleged” global warming needs more research before can decide whether to do anything about it.
And the lies, lies, lies. Like when Cheney and Bush made the media circuits for weeks telling people that Iraq was al-Qaida Central, and that we should all shudder in fear of Saddam Hussein’s finger being on the button.
How about the lies, lies, lies Bush and Co. told about secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe? Lies about buying prescription drugs from Canada? What about his crazy talk about Social Security and the lies he told trying to persuade Americans that the checks would stop coming unless we listened to him? And the lies about Haliburton? The oil companies?
And what about the craziness? The craziness about stem-cell research? Craziness that somehow some forms of torture should be acceptable? Craziness that somehow things weren’t as bad in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as the media was making out? Cuba? About Guantanamo? About “Old Europe” and our fabulous coalition?
Ahmadinejad wasn’t trying to make Americans mad. He’s just been watching TV for lo the past few years and thought that we liked political leaders spewing hate, lunacy and making it clear that he was just dead wrong.
It smacks of global hypocrisy if we scold Iranians for keeping around their hi-level nutballs even though we don’t seem to be willing to let go of our own.
Dave Perry is editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at dlperry@aurorasentinel.com.

GOP nervous in the service over Craig's stall

Just when you quit worrying about your stance in the men’s room stall, the tap-dancing senator from Idaho is back in action — in court, not the restroom.
Has anyone since Rock Hudson tried so hard to be outed so he could deny it?
Sen. Larry Craig got his day in a court of law rather than the court of public opinion yesterday in an effort to persuade a judge to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea for looking for love in all the wrong places back in June.
The good senator was accused by an undercover cop of approaching him for sex in a men’s stall in the Minneapolis airport.
Craig, who’s been running from rumors about his sexuality for years, pleaded guilty to the charges and when the mess went public, said he shouldn’t have done it. Plead guilty that is.
All of Craig’s now very former fellow conservative Republican pals were hoping Craig would stop explaining how he accidentally nudged the cop’s foot, didn’t really run his hand back and forth under the wall of the stall, and how he is in the habit of picking stray sheets of toilet paper off the stall floor.
Now, Craig wants a chance to tell it to the judge and all of America at least one more time.
Make it stop. We already know that Craig doesn’t flush, and only his fellow Republicans care whether he likes boys.
Given that the veteran lawmaker is so good with words and has used a great number of them to insist he’s not gay, maybe it’s time to ask whether the senator enjoys working both sides of the aisle, so to speak. Then we can allow American men to go back to men’s room to stall for time rather than a date.
Dave Perry is editor of the Aurora Sentinel. Reach him at dlperry@aurorasentinel.com.

Wrong turn choosing the write stuff

Ah, the follies of youth.
I’m sure what seemed like an excellent idea last week to embattled CSU student newspaper editor J. David McSwane, now seems a notion obviously fraught with flaws and peril.
McSwane decided to cash in his 15-minutes of fame last week when he launched the F-bomb in a headline over an editorial. At the time he made the decision to pull the stunt — reportedly as a way to draw attention to how apathetic we have all become regarding our right to free speech — “F” could have stood for freedom or fearless. Impetus for the editorial came from the Tasing incident of a college student who verbally attacked Sen. John Kerry during a Q&A session.
McSwane thought that exercising his right to write any damned thing he pleased would be a good way to draw attention to his newspaper’s opinion that too many students are too cavalier about their First-Amendment rights.
Now, “F” stands for, well, just what McSwane wrote, but in a different tense.
And tense is certainly what he must be feeling as most of the college and apparently half of the country clamor for his ouster.
There’s no doubt that the CSU junior defined sophomoric with his little stunt, but it’s a college newspaper where mistakes, even on this grand of scale, have happened before and will certainly make their way into print again.
Should McSwane see the light that what he did was a cute advertising stunt and a very poor editorial decision, it would be entirely wrong to fire him. It’s the second mistake that should draw lightning when it comes to human beings. Sure, the gaff brought a great deal of embarrassment to the school, the newspaper and to McSwane. But no lives were lost. No one was maimed or scarred.
As long has he admits the mistake, let him stay.
If he refuses to admit what a foolish error in judgment he made, then by all means, send him to the school’s marketing department where he will probably enjoy a brilliant career in advertising.