Serving You the News in Brief

Published October 1, 2007

By Max C. Bookman

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country.”

-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to a student audience at Columbia University during last week’s trip to New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly. The comment from the commonly inflammatory president received an embarrassing mix of boos and laughter from the audience. Perhaps there’re no closets in Iran either.

“Taser this: F**k Bush.”

-Title of an article that appeared in a Colorado State University student newspaper. The words, and the vehement outrage that ensued, have caught the nation’s eye in the battle for recognition of free speech. The editor who wrote the article has been called upon to resign. Old: If you read something that pisses you off, you deal with it. New: It’s our right to never be offended.

“The technology is making a huge difference.”

-Sein Win, managing editor of a Burmese exile news group. The Internet has proven to be indispensable in allowing images and accounts of the current conflict to escape the government lockdown. Burma, renamed Myanmar after a 1988 coup, has garnered international attention in the past week as mass protests against the oppressive military junta have turned violent.

“I think President Bush has to go into a corner and hide if a Republican is going to get elected.”

-Billionaire Donald Trump, on the prospects of a Republican candidate choosing to campaign with the sitting president. With no end in sight for the war in Iraq and approval ratings at historic lows, maybe Bush should forget the corner and jump out a window instead. You’re fired!

“Are chimps things without interests, or persons with interests?”

-Spokesman for an Austrian animal rights group commenting on a pending lawsuit to award Matthew Hiasl Pan, a chimpanzee, the same rights as a human. The lawsuit claims that Matthew is a being with interests, which should be reason enough to just call him a human. Weird.

Print This Article

Comments