My favorite new prominent international villain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, received a chillier, and more sharply critical, reception today at Tehran University than he got at Columbia a few weeks ago.
By the way, the word “villain” traces its etymology to the 14th Century, when it meant an “inhabitant of a farm; peasant; churl, boor; clown; miser; knave, scoundrel.” Many of these would apply to Ahmadinejad, although I don’t think he was a farm boy before becoming a revolutionary in the late seventies.
