Do you like lists? I love ’em. My favorites include “100 things to do before you die,” “50 ways to lose your blubber,” and “25 ways to hide your bald spot.” (No, I don’t have a bald spot. I have a bald zip code.)
I just found another list. It’s called “Ten people who could change the world” and — surprise, surprise — Bobby Jindal is on it. The man never ceases to amaze me. I mean, he’s destined to change the world, whereas I have enough trouble changing my little son’s diaper.
The list appeared in the British magazine New Statesman, along with a profile of the Louisiana governor and future president.
Bobby Jindal talks too fast. That, both admirers and detractors agree, is the most noticeable flaw in the impressive presentation he offers as the first Indian-American governor and perhaps the best prospect for revitalising a Republican Party that has just started its tour of the wilderness … [Link]
Come on, guys. He doesn’t talk too fast. You just need to brush up on your Punjabi. You do know that he isn’t always speaking English, don’t you?
The man is brilliant. He speaks Punjabi, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, French, Spanish, Arabic, Swahili and Xhosa, to name just a few. He’ll be the first U.S. president who can talk to foreign leaders in their native tongues. That would be a stark contrast from the last Republican president, who could barely talk to foreign leaders in his native tongue.
His rush of words is likely linked to the rush of his ambition, and his ambition – at 37, just two years above the minimum to be president – appears beyond restraint. He began his assimilation aged four, when he announced to his parents, a civil engineer and state official who moved from the Punjab to Louisiana before their son was born, that he wanted to be called “Bobby”, after a character in the 1970s sitcom The Brady Bunch, rather than his given name, Piyush. [Link]
You hear that? Bobby began his assimilation at age 4! The only thing I was assimilating at age 4 was payasam. Changing my name was the farthest thing from my mind. I was focusing on more exciting things, such as climbing the tree in the front yard, bouncing a ball off the neighbor’s wall, and pulling my sister’s hair.
He further adapted to his surroundings in his late teens when he left behind his Hindu heritage and converted to Catholicism, a move he chronicled in lengthy confessional writings while at Brown University and then Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar. [Link]
Lengthy confessional writings while in college? The only lengthy thing I wrote in college was a love poem to a young lady who, unfortunately, ran off with a man who had wooed her with a lengthy confessional writing.
After a brief stint as a management consultant, he got his first job in government at 24, when, with the backing of a congressman he had interned for, he submitted a proposal to reform the state’s public health-care system. [Link]
When he was 24, he submitted a proposal to reform the state’s public health-care system. When I was 24, I submitted a proposal to reform my roommate’s bathroom cleaning system. (His system involved staring at the dirty tub, shaking his head and shouting, “Hey Melvin, isn’t it your turn to clean the bathroom this year?”)
While many have already declared Jindal the “Republican Barack Obama”, the differences between the two men are telling. Where Obama has, after much soul-searching, memoir-writing and Kenya-visiting, embraced his biracial identity, Jindal has sought more to find common cause with white Americans. He loves McDonald’s and took to wearing cowboy boots during his second run for governor. And although he married a fellow Indian American, some relatives in the Punjab complain that he downplays his ties to his ancestral homeland. Where Obama was adrift in his early years, Jindal was raised in a steady household with high expectations and forged straight ahead from early on, showing up at college in penny loafers while Obama slouched with a cigarette. And where Obama has benefited from his eloquence and style, Jindal’s appeal is more workmanlike. He lacks Obama’s big smile and, at 5ft 8in and 135lb, offers little in the way of physical presence. [Link]
Bobby does have a big smile (see pic). He may be small in stature now, but if experience teaches us anything, it’s that the man never stops growing. By the time he runs for president, he’ll be 6-foot-three and 220. An extra helping of Cajun cooking will do the trick, not to mention those cowboy boots.
Yes, don’t be surprised if you see him on another list, this time in Forbes magazine: “The 25 most well-heeled politicians in the world.”
102 · rob said
this is by some randoms off a craigslist raves and rants, not being peddled by the purported leaders and top brass of the american political class.
We can agree there, for sure!
Rob, you have contributed nothing except personally attacks, which is what is disgusting. So far you have not proved to me Hartmann was mistaken. Hartman seems to me a good man fighting ugly racism.
And I gave you guys the Hartmann link:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=104&func=view&catid=63&id=248084
For those of you who were asking about who Hartmann is:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
“Thom Hartmann is live daily from noon-3 PM ET in Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Detroit, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Santa Fe, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Grand Rapids, and on over fifty other stations nationwide including Chicago, Washington DC, Santa Barbara, Minneapolis, and on XM and Sirius Satellite radio. He is also a four-time Project Censored-award-winning, New York Times best-selling author. His national daily progressive radio talk show, now in its sixth year on the air, replaced Al Franken on the Air America Radio Network, is also distributed to radio stations nationwide on the Jones Satellite system. More people listen daily to the Thom Hartmann Program than any other progressive talk show in the nation.”
“98 · rob on February 11, 2009 11:30 PM · Direct link · “Quoteâ€(?)
Sameer, I really, really hope that you’re a troll. Or else I’ll revoke my faith in democracy tout court.”
That’s really childish, Rob. Calling people names does not strengthen your point at all. It does not seem you are able to hear different views in a democracy without calling other people names. Doesn’t seem to me what you care for is democracy, but just to bully people into your view.
Look, I can be open to perhaps Hartmann was just talking heated rhetoric, though it does not seem like it. Can you be open to what he is saying being a fact?
I think everyone is open to thinking that maybe it’s a fact. But extraordinary claims like that need evidence. You haven’t given anything to corroborate Hartmann’s story and I can’t find anything.
I believe being Indian is an act, not a genetic designation or pre-disposition. Sonia Gandhi is an Indian. Fareed Zakaria is an Indian. Sashi Tharoor is an Indian. Bobby Jindal is definitely NOT an Indian. Barack Obama is more Indian than Bobby Jindal.
I’m not going to attempt explaining my reasoning, I’ll just let Sashi Tharoor himself do the talking: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2495846.cms
105 · Sameer said
Sameer: you have yet to prove to me that you don’t have sex with kittens.
108 · Sameer said
where in the world are you getting that hartmann said this? (i am not defending hartmann here – don’t know anything about the guy’s cred, just wondering about my ability to interpret a simple web page). it seems to be citing a poster on a forum citing a now deleted craigslist rave-and-rant equivalent.
Oh, goody!! Yet ANOTHER thread where we can beat the “he changed his name!!” and “he converted to that icky Christianity” horses to death. Because really, when it’s been commented on over a thousand times, have we said enough? This Christian with an “easy” name is now going to shut her laptop and go outside. Life is too short to read about repetitive allegations of conversion for political gain and how Desis who are Christian have it SO EASY.
I don’t know why he converted, but I do know that in almost all of the conversations which center around that choice of his, people like me are often left feeling uneasy at best, “grandfathered in” (because we converted a millenia or so ago) at worst. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
Anna, even i am guilty of posting messages targeting you regarding religious conversions and your western name indirectly (and I was banned from posting here after those posts)(www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004600.html / http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/004i). But I still stands by what I said about forceful religious conversion in India, that’s a separate topic I guess.
I am not writing this because you co-founded this blog ,but honestly i just felt like saying sorry to you after reading your many posts here and after understanding what you stand for. As a non-resident south Indian, I realized I have ethnically and culturally more in common with you than just religion.
111 · Manju said
I don’t understand the last line. Or is it some inside joke?
111 · Manju said
I don’t understand the last line. Or is it some private joke?
115 · gm said
It’s logically impossible to prove a negative.
116 · NV said
Huh? I thought saw Sameer have sex with a kitten, and just wanted him to tell me it ain’t so.
22 · ShallowThinker said
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Why are Muslim/Arabic names never considered “Not authentic” with Indians? None of them are Indian, but have a name like “John” and you automatically trying to be something your not?
It is obviosly a race thing. So, you see Anna, most Indian’s just are fearfull of people leaving the dark side and leaving one less soldier for us when the race wars start.
Very good point. Also, why are Indians so anti-English-place names, like “Bombay”, which they claim is Anglicized (or Portugese) way of saying “Mumbai” or even “Bengaluru” for “Bangalore”.
Why not also change all the place names that are Arabic (i.e. the ones ending in ‘-abad’)? This is a double standard. Many of these Europeanized place names have been around longer than the Arabic ones.
Were it not for the presence of a sizeable Muslim vote-bank those names would be changed so fast it would make your head spin. It is a democracy after all. You need strength in numbers to make the rules.
Exocist, I have given the Hartmann link each time. The last time being #106.
Manju, your example is gross. You could have presented your point in a more descent way, which would have been more effective.
People seem to think by being rude or vulgar you make your position, but in fact you don’t make your point better.
” 109 · NV on February 12, 2009 11:26 AM · Direct link · “Quoteâ€(?)
I think everyone is open to thinking that maybe it’s a fact. But extraordinary claims like that need evidence. You haven’t given anything to corroborate Hartmann’s story and I can’t find anything.”
NV, for me what Hartmann said is enough. I shared it here with you guys. If you need more corroboration, you are free to do so. To be frank, Jindal meeting with the KKK did not actually hurt anyone. It is lame to try to be accepted by them as white enough. But the other things that Hartmann listed that upset him about Jindal but let slide, until the last thing Jindal did which was the straw that broke the camel’s back for him are things that hurt other people. So even if Hartmann was mistaken, and Jindal did not the Lousianna KKK, it looks like Jindal has done enough as far as Hartmann is concerned to be the brown David Duke.
105 · Sameer said
who will fight the pretty racists, i ask you? and since people were upset on another thread, let me be the first to say that i think lou dobbs is prettier than tom tancredo. the orange gives him a beautiful glow as if he were basking in the rays of the setting sun wafting through the curtains of his studio as he mellifluously coos his populist hate-screeds while drawing a multi-million dollar paycheck.
(sameer, either my reading skills are busted or yours are. you are quoting a forum post by some user on thom hartmann’s website. how does that equate to something thom hartmann said? unless you know he goes by the user name of ctulhu?)
120 · Sameer said
Sameer: You have yet to prove to me that you didn’t make love to Aishwarya Rai?
“He speaks Punjabi, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, French, Spanish, Arabic, Swahili and Xhosa, to name just a few.”
Do you have any references to back this up? I can find no verification of this list anywhere, and it seems highly improbably for a number of reasons:
1) Aren’t Jindal’s parent’s Punjabi? Where would he acquire the opportunity to gain any fluency in Telugu, Malayalam or Tamil (not to mention Swahili and Xhosa!) 2) Jindal was born and raised in the American South. There are incredibly few opportunities here to study “exotic” languages such as any of the Indian or African languages listed. 3) Jindal’s personal history seems to show intense desire for assimilation, such as conversion to Christianity, adoption of of the name “Bobby”, immersion in radical Republican politics, etc. It seems unusual, given his patterns of rejecting his heritage in favor of the norms of his adopted home, that he would undertake the remarkably rigorous task of gaining fluency in five (to name just a few 😉 ) Indian languages, at least three of which are totally unrelated to his parent’s native tongues.
Again, it does not make sense–but if you can supply some backup I’d be happy to be proven wrong.