At the United Nations, there are, as you'd expect, flagrantly pointless press briefings going on in some wing or another, concerning some topic or another, at any given hour of the day. The diplomats and reporters accept the custom with knowing smirks and lazily upraised hands. It's the standard kabuki. Except, that is, when Reverend Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann is speaking. The president of the U.N. General Assembly, d'Escoto has apparently decided, at age 76, that he has no time left for politesse, and his briefings are another animal entirely--the kind of invective-laced bravura jags perfected by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, who, as it happens, are two of d'Escoto's heroes.

Take a March showing the Nicaraguan priest and onetime Sandinista put on after returning from a tour through Asia and Europe, during which he had cozied up to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and defended Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir against Darfur-related war crimes charges. Back in New York and pressed by reporters about such controversial stands, he scoffed at Washington's demonization of Ahmadinejad, given its "canonization of the worst of dictators," like Marcos and Pinochet. He blamed the United States for undermining the United Nations in the run-up to the Iraq war. He suggested that the Bashir indictment was racist and tied it (and, if his furrowed brow and hand-waving were any indication, the Darfur carnage itself) to the White House. "Who first raised the issue of genocide?" he said. "Bush. George W. Bush. That should tell you quite a bit already....