Award-Winning Performances At The UN

By: Rachel Marsden

Forget Broadway -- the best show in NYC this past week was the United Nations assembly meeting. Since no one is grading or reviewing the performances in this comedic production, I figured I'd do so here.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: At his much anticipated Columbia University appearance, Mahmoud responded to allegations he executes gays with, "In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country...I don't know who has told you we have [gays]."

I can imagine him as a child, being asked if he stole cookies: "No! There are no Oreos in the jar, insh'allah!" The audience laughed at the suggestion that there are no gays in Iran -- the same reaction I have when someone tells me there were no al-Qaida in Iraq prior to the war, even though they were in countries like Canada and the U.S.

So apparently we can relax now that Mahmoud has the gays under control. But I wonder how many of the leftists in the audience started getting twitchy about their anti-American poster boy when he started serving up off-menu talking points?

In his UN address, Mahmoud declared the debate over his uranium enrichment -- for which he's ignored two UN sanctions -- closed. Sure, why not.

Grade: A+. Bonus marks for knocking celebutards off the front page (no easy feat), and for driving home the point, once again, that the United Nations is utterly useless.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy: In referring to Iran, Sarkozy told the UN: "Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace. They lead to war." But then he fumbled in adding, "We can only resolve this crisis by combining firmness with dialogue."

It's a ratcheting down from his foreign policy speech a month ago, in which he described the options as the "Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran."

The world needs more sexy, pre-presidential Sarko, like when he said he'd take a Karcher-made pressure hose to troublemaking scumbags in the Parisian suburbs. And to think he even had a specific brand of hose picked out, meaning he'd given it some careful thought. (Excuse me while I go take a cold shower.)

I really wish he -- or someone at the UN -- would just let 'er rip and say something like, "Look, we can't let this jackass have nukes. If he spins one more centrifuge, he gets a missile up le derriere, d'accord?"If anyone could get away with that at the UN, it would be a Frenchman. They can pretty much stroll through airport security with a grenade, declaring "diplomatic immunity."

Grade: B. Slipping slightly, but nothing a little private coaching couldn't fix.

Control planetary cycles?

U.S. President George W. Bush: I don't know how Bush even managed to drag himself to this circle jerk of uselessness. The "Responding to Climate Change" theme alone would be enough to make me want to pass. I mean really -- how arrogant do you have to be to think you can control planetary cycles when you can't even stop a genocide in Rwanda with your men standing there on the ground?

Bush mustered a speech in which he told off North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Syria and Zimbabwe. But it's not like these countries haven't been committing atrocities for years.

If the UN was going to do anything, it would have by now. Or perhaps they're waiting for the U.S. to do all the heavy lifting -- so they can then turn around and tell America off again.

Grade: A. Because he actually bothered to show up.

PUBLISHED: TORONTO SUN (September 30/07)