The Obaminables

And so the US election has come to pass and Barack Obama has been re-elected for another term. As they often like to report in Indian elections; no violence or booth capturing was reported and nobody died. The thrill in our Indian media over the elections and particularly the victory of Obama was predictable. Then everyone had specialists, of course, to answer the eternal question “What does it mean for India”?

I mentioned in my previous post that I got most of my education from the Asterix comics. Our MSM will tell you how multi-cultural and diverse the US population is and how their society is changing. But actually Indians, we are more like the Gauls. Every free minute we have, we love to have a good fight. We fight over every silly thing till we knock the senses out of each other and then, like the Gauls, we get together and have a great party and meal after every big fight. There’s a small difference though, the Gauls had the good sense to tie up Cacofonix. We don’t have any such luck with our very own Cacofonix. There are some major differences. No matter how much the Gauls fought each other the moment they saw the Romans they were all united. They had one leader, one voice and the willingness to defend their little village at any and all costs. Their Druid had the magic potion, our druid (MMS) is still searching for a magic wand. And we have a Roman amongst us. But the folks in our MSM constantly want us to wonder why we can’t be like the Americans instead of the Gauls. (By the way, some Romans will be playing Cricket in our land soon). Folks in our MSM even love our enemies and frequently host them on their channels. So what does Obama’s victory mean for India? I can educate you… but hey, let’s hear from the experts.

This guy who goes by the title of Ashish Dikshit sends out a tweet thanking America. He’s an assistant editor in IBN Lokmat. Don’t laugh, he seriously is. I guess he was thanking America in the hope that they will save India from Hindu extremists. Well, he was the one who tweeted that Hindu extremists were behind the last Pune blasts (I say last because there has been a series and who knows..). And when confronted with his stupidity the man tweeted the Pune case is still sub-juicy. I mean, it’s now in the courts or something but he figured out before the police or the investigators that it was Hindu extremists. Wonder how he got the juice then. For Marathi viewers of TV this is the guy and his channel that brings the most intelligence to their homes.

What about the acclaimed author Ashutosh? Well, if not for this guy you wouldn’t understand the significance of Americans rejecting the Roman. Mitt ‘Romany’ that is! Asterix was right; everybody seems to hate the Romans. Even Americans! And as a keen observer of American society he delivers the profound observation that they are “reinventing” themselves. So like Surf or Vim you can expect to see a “New, Improved America”. Now you wait and watch how the world is washed with this new “reinvented” stuff. There’s hope.

Michelle Obama, the lovely first lady, stuck to CNN-IBN all night and watched the results and analysis. She knew her hubby would win but not why. So she was glued to Rajdeep’s deep analysis of the results and then tweeted: ‘When it comes to political analysis, Rajdeep Sardesai is Numero Uno’. I totally agree. A regular reader of this blog was more honest. LakshmishaKS tweeted: “@sardesairajdeep Thank you for your analysis and providing such minute details of the US elections, was really helpful for my life”. There, you see, Rajdeep has changed the lives of many with his deep analysis. I guess he'll miss the sarcasm and pat himself on the back.Then you did have the monk’s profound wisdom to our political parties to be more “inclusive”. The rate at which this term is being abused we might soon have a ‘Ministry of Inclusive’. Ah well, if the Numero Uno can dish out such wisdom can the Numero Unee be far behind?

So our very own Cacofonix, also the greatest Social Genius since Al Gore invented the Internet, first suggests that Whites are not enough (read Hindus are not enough) and it’s important to reach out to minorities. A little later the journalistic-bimbo found Indians in the US are fulminating against the ‘minority politics’ of Obama. She asks if Indians aren’t a minority in the US and so why they complain. You know, it’s hard to crack into certain skulls that involving minorities and ‘minority politics’ are two different things. Besides, she doesn’t get into her thick skull that the Indian minority is not the same as ‘THE minority’. The Indians who may be complaining about ‘minority politics’ are probably talking of ‘illegal Bangladeshis’ in America or that minority which is permanently in the ‘victimhood’ mode. I don’t care really as long as Obama finally amends the US Constitution to make ‘female orgasm’ a Fundamental Right.

It’s not over until the fat lady sings they say. I don’t want to go into what that means but I only know that any democratic, liberal, inclusive, inspiring and instructive exercise in the US has important lessons for India. Oh.. and it’s not so much who won, like Ravi Shastri would say “Democracy is the clear winner’. Barkha Dutt echoes Ashutosh on changing societies, changing elections and how the cynical Indian must learn to vote. So please, all of you cynics, now that you’ve seen Obama win with inclusiveness, dynamics of society and understood the instructive lessons from the US, please do vote. Okay? These tweets and the analysis one saw on TV are just personal opinions and harmless really. But it does show up one thing for sure. It once again confirms the fact that our media morons have as short a memory as they accuse the general public of. Five years ago, these very pundits explained how Mayawati had found a magic formula in “social engineering”. How she won the elections by getting together Dalits, Muslims, Jains, Sikhs, Hindus, Yadavs, Brahmins, Kurmis.. In short, she put together a ‘Rahul Gandhi’ in each constituency to win the UP elections of 2007. Five years later she is cooling her specially flown heels somewhere. The media morons also ignore the US history. In the past 50 years there are only four presidents who have not been re-elected. Let’s estimate the reason behind each of them.

JFK’s successor Lyndon Johnson didn’t get re-elected in 1968 because he chose not to run again. The Vietnam war had drained him. Gerald Ford didn’t get re-elected in 1976 because his predecessor, Richard Nixon, had left the cross of Watergate hanging around the neck of the Republican presidency. (Ford was never directly elected President he took over from Nixon as he was VP). Jimmy Carter didn’t get re-elected in 1980 because of the terrible events of Iran. 60 Americans were held hostage in the US embassy in Iran for 444 days and Carter had a botched rescue attempt to boot. It is unlikely Americans would forgive such a thing. We do, with all the Indian hostages that Somali pirates take. The hostages were released on the day the next president, Ronald Reagan, took oath. George Bush Sr. didn’t get re-elected in 1992. This was after 12 consecutive years of Republicans. It’s not very hard to understand wanting change, especially with the flamboyant Bill Clinton as candidate, whose oratory skills, (oratory that our media gushes over) are far superior to Obama’s. Even the much lampooned George Bush, who won a controversial election in 2000, won his re-election with a thumping majority in 2004. So two Democrats and two Republicans were never re-elected. What’s this big deal about Obama?

Our so-called experts forget one thing. Even Americans strongly vote on religious lines. Mitt Romney is a Mormon. He is not of the Christian/Catholic denomination that George Bush was. So whether Whites, Blacks, Hispanics or “minorities” that still remains an important factor. So, all this talk of changing society or “inclusiveness” is not something that has suddenly happened in this particular election. This is the load of BS which is being passed on. The second thing is, unless something terribly bad happens, as with Jimmy Carter, most US presidents do get a second term and nothing dramatically unusual in Obama’s case too.

Now, as far as this bunch of media morons, whose ever-loving admiration of democracy and “inclusiveness” is overflowing, they really need to worry if they are doing the jobs they are meant to do instead of orgasming over the US elections. Closer home, a petition has been filed by one Prabhat Pandey in UP (see TOI report). His lament is that he wasn’t allowed to file his nomination to contest Dimple Yadav. Now this Dimple is the wife of UP CM Akhilesh Yadav. She won the Kannauj election for a seat in the Lok Sabha. Uncontested! Congress, BJP, BSP and other parties colluded to let her win the election. That, is the biggest crime in democracy. None of these democracy-loving celebs who lecture the world on democratic values held a single debate or program to condemn the political parties who allowed this crime to pass. There was neither a protest nor any kind of discussion on any TV channel in what should be seen as a malpractice in a democracy to allow candidate go uncontested. In a similar situation in the US, Michael Moore, documentary film maker and activist, put up a plant ‘Ficus’ to challenge an uncontested candidate. (See all 3 parts of the film on Youtube). His sarcastic take says it all.

So all this blabbering by our media celebs has nothing to with India or even democracy. It’s nothing more than what they perceive is their own liberal lifestyle. In fact, they stand for the worst form of dictatorship and cronyism one will ever find in the democratic world. The only thing they value is their own freedom and liberty to utter nonsense day in and day out. For the moment they are starring in “The Obaminables”, few days or months later they will once again “evolve” the Gandhi.