About AJ DiCintio
A.J. DiCintio is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. He first exercised his polemical skills arguing with friends on
the street corners of the working class neighborhood where he grew up.
Retired from teaching, he now applies those skills, somewhat honed and
polished by experience, to social/political affairs.
Let me be upfront about something right
from the jump: This piece is in no way critical of the behavior some Indian
citizens are directing toward a remarkable color-changing member of the
genus Rana recently discovered in the province of Kerala (as reported in
Britain’s Sun).
Yes, it is true that some folks are coming not just to see the frog but
“to pray and ask for miracles.” However, their actions are entirely
consistent with the Hindu belief that all creation is an extension of
the perfectly omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Brahman.
But it is not just the prime article of Hindu belief that forbids
criticism. Important facts about the amphibian itself insulate the
pilgrims from condemnation — and not because it can change from white to
yellow to gray to dark yellow and, finally, to a transparent state that
makes “its internal organs” visible.
Following are a few of the truly important aspects of this wonderful
creature.
...It has never failed to mention India’s peace loving people and their
democratic, productive spirit in its speeches because it could
never deem those facts irrelevant.
...It has never traveled abroad to throw itself prostrate on its
froggish belly, asking forgiveness for the fact that India has “shown
arrogance [to]...been dismissive [of], even derisive [toward]” Pakistan,
China, and pretty much the rest of the world.
...It has never spoken in a way that implies a moral equivalence between
Indian sins and every last sin committed by others — including the
“man-caused disaster” a few “extremists” visited upon the city of
Mumbai.
...It has never promised to close an offshore jail built to hold
“atankavadi” or “terrorists” (as they are called in Plain Hindi and
Plain English) without first offering the people specific details
regarding where the stateless psychopaths will be incarcerated and how
their cases will be adjudicated in civilian courts.
...It has never told the Indian people that they can, indeed, borrow
their way to economic prosperity and social stability — but only if they
agree to burden themselves with an incubus of borrowing that exceeds the
totality of their nation’s entire historic debt.
...It has never plumed itself as a brilliant, intellectually admirable
practitioner of a new politics while it meticulously proposes trillions
upon trillions in spending but never speaks a single word or number to
the people about the fact that the resulting “unsustainable” deficits
mean trillions and trillions in increased taxes — on everyone.
...It has never paraded its religious affiliation when doing so is
politically expedient only to speak about its faith on the world stage
with such general, superficial language that Camille Paglia would say
this if it were human, Christian, male, and president of the United
States:
[In Cairo, his religion] seemed like a badge or school scarf, a
testament of affiliation without spiritual convictions or
constraints...[His] lack of fervor may be one reason he rejects and
perhaps cannot comprehend the religious passions that perennially erupt
around the globe and that will never be waved away by mere words...By
approaching religion with the cool, neutral voice of the American
professional elite, [he] was sometimes simplistic and even inadvertently
condescending, as in his gift bag of educational perks...as if any of
[them] could checkmate the seething, hallucinatory obsessions of
jihadism. (Salon)
...Last, but not finally, it has never been one of the great scourges
that plague the family ranidae — a Chicago Machine Politician that
always defers to tactics preached by the poisonous toad Saul Alinsky,
tactics that instruct every disciple to “freeze, personalize, [and]
polarize” an opponent; to betray, in a political nanosecond, a formerly
useful religious counselor; and even, when political expediency winks
its dirty wink, to throw one’s grandmother under a conveniently passing
bus.
So, if there is nothing scandalous about how certain admirable citizens
of India are reacting to a certain admirably existential frog, whence
the scandal?
Well, as you have probably guessed by now, it is associated with members
of American’s liberal media who regard Barack Obama not as a
merely-human being (and a strongly collectivist one at that) but as a
very special frog they have kissed into something much more exalted than
a prince.
For many, this slobbering love affair (thank you, Bernard Goldberg)
became famously public when Chris Matthews proudly announced he
experiences a “thrill” going up his leg when Obama speaks.
But as time passed, common sense Americans began to realize that the
real excitement occurs not in the liberal leg but in the liberal brain,
where Obama-caused impulses blaze across billions of synapses until they
saturate every last gray liberal neuron with something that can be
described only as an emotional and intellectual orgasm of Krakatoan
proportions.
For example, here is Maureen Dowd exploding in wonder and admiration at
the divine manner by which President Obama attends to his job:
“He is intellectually engaged by sculpting history. The trellis of
hideous problems is a challenge that lures him to be powerfully
concentrated.”
Despite their considerable labors, Matthews and Dowd have only come
close to expressing what liberals really feel and think about Obama,
explaining why it fell to Newsweek’s courageous Evan Thomas to teach
every liberal not just to say “it” but to say it right, that is, to say
it explicitly, without an article and with a capital “G.”
...Reagan was all about America...Obama is “we are above that now”...We
stand for something — I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the
country, above — above the world, he’s sort of God...
So, that’s the real, disgusting scandal about worship and frogs.
Now, at times we will be tempted to react to it by simply and
exclusively mocking the liberal media as a bunch of arrogant,
obsessive-compulsive zealots who, having made a religion of politics and
gods of politicians, can’t resist calling their god with throaty croaks
that one particularly perceptive and creative reader of The Sun
characterized as sounding something like this: “Br-aaak! Br-aaak! Br-aaak!”
But we can’t allow temptation to win the day because history teaches
that this kind of worship is unspeakably dangerous in its maniacal,
rapturous certainty. Therefore, let’s have our fun; but let’s also
recall that admirable Indian amphibian as we return to engaging a
frightening perversity with all the seriousness it deserves.
