Random Thoughts of a Muddled Mind

The week that was included an amazing few days at the UN in NYC. It started with the speech by President Bush…okay, decent speech, nothing really new, just a restatement of purpose. Then the fun began. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave his speech, which included the words

0, Almighty God, all men and women are Your creatures and You have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirsts for justice, the perfect human being promised to all by You, and make us among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause.

…a direct call for the Twelfth Iman…which is at a minimum, a little troubling….considering the apocalyptic nature of this belief.. Then it was time for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s little stemwinder, wherein he proclaimed

I think that the first people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States, because their threat is in their own house. The devil is right at home. The devil — the devil, himself, is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. (APPLAUSE) Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.

Do you notice what appears in the middle of that? Hmmmm…applause. Amazing, but as he stood in a building on land provided by our country, he had the unmitigated temerity to make that statement…and the UN members, those paragons of respect and appropriateness, rather than condemning his comments, rather, applauded the inappropriate comments of President Chavez…and lest you think that this was an isolated incident, imagine the surprise when President Chavez was later in the day warmly welcomed at Cooper-Union. For those of you who are not aware, Cooper-Union has a history of hosting important speeches

On February 27, 1860, the school’s Great Hall became the site of a historic address by a little-known attorney from Illinois, then an undeclared candidate for the Republican Party’s Presidential nomination. Abraham Lincoln’s dramatic speech opposed Stephen A. Douglas on the question of federal power to regulate and limit the spread of slavery to the federal territories and new States. Widely reported in the press and reprinted throughout the North in pamphlet form, the speech galvanized support for Lincoln and contributed to his gaining the Party’s nomination for the Presidency. Coincidentally, Peter Cooper himself ran for President in 1876. Since then, the Great Hall has served as a platform for many historic addresses by American Presidents Grant, Cleveland, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and most recently, Bill Clinton. Clinton spoke on May 12, 1993 about reducing the federal deficit and on May 23, 2006, as the Keynote Speaker at The Cooper Union’s 147th Commencement along with Anna Deavere Smith. To this day, the Great Hall continues to serve as an important metropolitan art space, hosting lectures and performances by key figures such as Steve Reich, Salman Rushdie, Ralph Nader, Richard Stallman, Rudolph Giuliani, and Pema Chodron.

Interesting week…very interesting week.