The New York Times wants to make sure you know, however, that some of the protesters were bused in for the occasion.

Protesters, including students bused in from other schools, swarmed Columbia University to demonstrate against the speech.

This is the same New York Times which claims:

U.S. Focus on Ahmadinejad Puzzles Iranians

Q&A highlight: Bollinger, having graciously offered AJad a platform, denounced him to his face as a “petty and cruel dictator.”

Biggest laugh line from AJad: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

Right. Maybe this has something to do with it:

Der Spiegel features recently discovered photos of Auschwitz employees enjoying their off-hours:

Twelve SS auxiliaries sit happily on a fence railing eating blueberries given to them by an SS officer. The photo was taken in 1944 in Solahütte, a recreation home located near Auschwitz for the SS team in charge of running the concentration camp. …

The photos were taken between May and December 1944, and they show the officers and guards relaxing and enjoying themselves — as countless people were being murdered and cremated at the nearby death camp.

Spiegel reports that Germans were “shocked” to see these photographs. Why? Did they not understand that their forebears’ continued to live their lives through the war years—falling in love, getting married, having children, having affairs, working, doing whatever it is that people do— while their nation (and in many cases these same forebears) created unimaginable suffering for The Other?

A gift especially for you, from the New York Times:

I wonder how much “they” paid for the ad, and who “they” are.