How many times do dictators get laughed at in their own countries? ~Andrew Sullivan

When it comes to Ahmadinejad, if memory serves, some Iranian students are quite capable of heckling and mocking the man (and setting fire to his picture!), chanting “death to the dictator” while he is speaking to them.  This makes all of the loose talk about the “dictator” Ahmadinejad misleading–if anyone is the “dictator” in Iran, it is the Ayatollah Khameinei (not so many publicly mock him).  If the invitation was an exercise in getting people to mock Ahmadinejad publicly, Columbia might have saved itself the trouble and let the folks back home do it with real enthusiasm.