Palestinian ambassador visits Cornell, makes camel jokes

SafiehAmbassador of the Palestinian people and the PLO Afif Safieh visited Cornell University last night, and spoke to the collected students and faculty about what he called the responsibility of the U.S. to help solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with its overwhelming political power.

Interspersed between his serious pleas for increased diplomacy, Mr. Safieh joked around a bit, saying that while most camels can work for ten days without drinking, most diplomats can drink for ten days without working. After the laughter died down, he assured the audience that he was, in fact, more like a camel.

He also poked fun at the U.S. for behaving like a powerless country when dealing with Israel, and urged the superpower to wage peace, not war, in the Middle East.

“We would be your consenting victims if America decided to wage peace on us,? he joked.

Mr. Safieh took a number of questions, many of which accused him of ignoring the Israeli side of the equation, or being irrelevant, seeing that the Gaza Strip was recently wrestled away from his party, Fatah, by the terroristic organization Hamas.

(Disclosure: Yeah, so I sort of wrote the article I’m linking to.)

Denzel Washington drops Texas college a cool million

DenzelEnigmatic celebrity actor Denzel Washington has a lot of money he’s itching to give away, apparently.

So much, in fact, that he gave Texas’s Wiley College ONE MILLION DOLLARS to restart their debate team, after he appeared there this week to screen his new movie, “The Great Debaters.” The movie, starring Washington, is about the all-black college’s 1930 debate team. Denzel said he’d “like to get the team going again.” Talk about priming the pump, holy shit.

Now, I’m all for charity, and I’m all for celebrities giving away their money (Denzel already has a history of this) but a million bucks for a debate team? You can start those for free! I imagine the school will simply put the money towards scholarships with the requirement that recipients join the debate team or Denzel will cry.