Why Not Again?

There is a house in Thiruvanmaiyur along the beach road where I usually take my morning constitutional – a big house of indeterminate color, with all kinds of frills, picture windows and Rapunzel towers; one, that stands out and would catch the eye of sidewalk artists and movie audiences – that seems mostly abandoned. The yard is choked with weeds and refuse; neighbors heaving their trash over the wall. It is said to be used occasionally for photo shoots for some of the oodles of movies the highly successful Tamil film industry cranks out on a daily basis.

One time I was out there early morning, watching the fishermen unloading their catches and I noticed a helicopter hovering over that particular place. I didn’t think too much about it at the time; but lately, I’ve been thinking that it could also very well function as India’s version of our witness protection program or as a safe house for Tamil Tiger plotters. Hide in plain sight. Why not make the lie so big, so obvious, that no one will question it?

Mockery is one of the most potent weapons in the human arsenal. It has always been so. Christ on the cross was said to have been mocked. Obviously, Bush was mocked constantly. Since Obama’s election, mockery has been pretty much off the table as the president has shown himself to be far more adept in the art (of mockery) than any of his critics.

Besides, it’s in bad form to mock a black man. One might be accused of racism. Though, this too might be dependent on other factors as we are discovering that black or white may not be the issue at all. Justice Thomas, for instance, might be mocked and no one will say much about it. It’s only Obama that cannot be mocked. What’s the difference? Both men – last time I looked – are black. Here we come to the nub or it: only certain black men can be mocked while others can’t. The modifier that explains all this appears to be ‘conservative’.

Note how liberals strut around, routinely mocking tea parties, Republican lawmakers and presidents, popular talk show hosts and commentators, second amendment supporters, presidential aspirants, religious leaders and their congregations, etc. Make no mistake, these are attacks and they do damage.

You might say that Limbaugh (and some others) mocks the Left. The difference is that Limbaugh gives reasons for his mockery. The Left gives no reasons. Ordinarily, the press would step in to mediate. But, we all know that the media tilts the playing field to favor the Left. Limbaugh’s words and audience are routinely treated as if they do not exist. Instead, people like the girls on ‘The View’ are given star headline treatment.

The day after Osama’s killing, Limbaugh went on air and mocked Obama. There it was! The Left was outraged (if they said anything). What was supposed to be America’s proudest moment since the start of the war on terror, was being mocked unabashedly. Other talk show hosts, known for being critical of the president, refrained from doing so. Not Limbaugh!

Maybe it’s just me, but I too found the whole deal somewhat hollow. For me personally, it did not seem to rise to the status of a significant event. And any attempt to see it as such seemed somehow contrived and cheap, and quite worthy of mockery – an ‘emperor has no clothes’ moment, if you wish. A proper trial would have sat well and settled it. The subtext is, of course, that we can no longer expect a proper trial in this country. Obama has taken that from us as well.

It should have been a moment of quiet restraint and reflection. It needed to be handled with much greater fineness than simply dumping a corpse into the drink. Mike had it right, I think: ‘Defeat snatched out of the jaws of victory’, he wrote. Neither does it impress that al-Qaeda confirmed the kill publicly. I seem to remember AQ websites being largely supportive of Obama winning the election in 2008. They got their wish. Why not again?

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/