The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Let’s Make a Deal. On Second Thought, Let’s Not.
When she was challenging Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton scoffed at his naiveté in promising to sit down for tea with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the nutball who is titular president of Iran. Now, as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton is reassuring Arab allies that the Obama administration is in touch with reality even if the candidate was not, as the Associated Press reports from Sham-el-Sheik, Egypt:

[Mrs.] Clinton expressed doubt Monday that Iran would respond to the Obama administration’s expressions of interest in engaging Teheran on nuclear and other issues, a senior State Department official said.

[Mrs.] Clinton made the statement in a private meeting with the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who had expressed to Clinton a concern among Persian Gulf nations that Obama might make a deal with Iran without full consultation with US allies. . . .

Clinton told her counterpart that the Obama administration is carefully calculating its moves and will consult fully with Gulf allies.

“We’re under no illusions,” the official quoted Clinton as telling Abdullah. “Our eyes are wide open on Iran.”

Hollywood’s eyes, however, seem to be wide shut. “An adviser to Iran’s president on Sunday demanded an apology from a team of visiting Hollywood actors and movie industry officials, including Annette Bening, saying films such as ‘300’ and ‘The Wrestler’ were ‘insulting’ to Iranians,” the AP reports from Tehran:

Without an apology, members of Iran’s film industry should refuse to meet with representatives from the nine-member team, said Javad Shamaqdari, the art and cinema adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“In my viewpoint, it is a failure to have an official meeting with one who is insulting,” Shamaqdari told The Associated Press.

In “300,” the Persians are the bad guys in a battle with Sparta, 2,490 years ago. In “The Wrestler,” Mickey Rourke’s nemesis goes by the stage name “The Ayatollah.” The AP notes that “neither movie was shown in Iran.” You would think, though, that the Hollywood delegation would have done their homework and cleared up this misunderstanding before heading for Tehran.

On Yahoo, incidentally, the AP story is accompanied by a photo showing actresses Bening and Alfre Woodard standing with an Iranian actress. Bening and Woodard are clad in headscarves. As Deutsche-Welle reported in 2007, when Mrs. Clinton’s predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, visited Saudi Arabia, another repressive Islamist state, she declined to wear a scarf.

The Bush administration was more progressive on women’s rights than Hollywood.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”