Saturday Night Live II

James Carafano / May 13, 2010

The funniest thing on television is not Betty White on Saturday Night Live. It’s the Iranian President.  “Live from Tehran. It’s Nuclear Summit Too!” That’s how Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should have opened his own 60 country nuclear summit last month. Ahmadinejad’s two-day forum convened the week after President Obama’s star-studded nuclear security summit in Washington.

The Iran conference was a perfect parody of Obama’s nuclear security summit — Ahmadinejad’s version of a “Saturday Night Live” spoof.

Well, he did it again. Ahmadinejad rained on Obama’s parade showing up at the UN for the Nuclear Non Proliferation Summit last week and launched into a long rant against the United States. At a White House press briefing, Spokesman Robert Gibbs called the Iranian president’s remarks “predictable.”

That may be, but Gibbs missed the point of why Ahmadinejad repeatedly does his Saturday night Live impressions. What’s troubling is his criticism and ridicule of the U.S. It suggests Ahmadinejad doesn’t take the administration’s opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons program seriously. Right or wrong, that’s an extremely dangerous perception for Iranians and Americans alike.