New York: Ahmadinejad, “mystical populist”, holds forth at Columbia; Columbia blows it.

Updated 7:30 PM EST: Everyone loses. Columbia allows aggressive, long-winded, grandstanding and scripted opening “questions”, preventing Ahmadinejad from looking as bad as he might have looked, and giving the Iran president a chance to hit them out of the park, which he in turn also screws up. Except for letting him speak, Columbia totally blew the details of this. Everyone involved, including Columbia President Bollinger, looks bad, pandering and/or lame. Shame on us. AP: here, including MSNBC video. — JDH and HHO