Swift Reactions 10: Curtis Sliwa Gives Jon Swift Some Slum Love

I have often said that if you want to see what conservatives will be saying tomorrow today this modest blog is the place to go. WABC radio host and former vigilante (in a good way) Curtis Sliwa not only reads this blog, he invited me on his show last night, Thursday, February 26, to talk about why Gov. Bobby Jindal is America's Slumdog Millionaire, which I wrote about here. After I wrote that piece, Mr. Sliwa also referred to Gov. Jindal as a "slumdog millionaire" when he interviewed Republican chairman Michael Steele and even got Steele to send out some "slum love" to Gov. Jindal. I must confess I'm not really sure what "slum love" is and in fact I didn't understand a lot of their interview as most of it was conducted in hip-hop, or as we used to call it, jive talk. I explained to Mr. Sliwa at the beginning of our interview that I am still a little rusty when it comes to speaking in this new Republican vernacular but I did my best and I've been studying this video (which the RNC should send out to all of its members) to help me learn how to speak like a real Republican:



Mr. Sliwa, who loves Gov. Jindal as much as I do, agreed with me when I said that Gov. Jindal is "the new face of the Republican Party" and that comparing him to what he called the "feel-good movie of the year" was apt. Update: Here is a recording of my appearance on the show:



Unfortunately, however, some people apparently took offense to referring to Gov. Jindal as a "slumdog millionaire," such as Amitabh Pal, writing on a website called The Progressive, which claims to have been on the Internet since 1909, which strikes me as being highly unlikely. He wrote that "comments relating to [Gov. Jindal's] Indian background" are "repugnant" and insultingly referred to my piece as "satirical." He also took issue with the photo I used to illustrate it, calling it "a weird-looking photo of Dev Patel," who is the star of Slumdog Millionaire. I must admit I did get a little mixed up and actually thought it was a photo of Gov. Jindal, though I think this illustration does go with the theme of the piece (and I don't know what is so "weird" about it) so I don't think it's necessary to change it or post a correction as I did when I accidentally posted a photo of Thurgood Marshall in a piece about Clarence Thomas.

While I'm used to being criticized by liberals like Mr. Pal, I was very upset when he then attacked one of my dearest commenters, Bukko in Australia, who wrote, "I applaud Gov. Jindal's efforts to make Louisiana into a replica of the slums of the country where his ancestors came from. Look what a roaring success India is! Why shouldn't New Orleans be as prosperous as Mumbai? The weather's just as bad, and although I've never been to the Black Hole of Calcutta (yes, I know it's politically correct to call it Kalicut now) I reckon it must smell a lot like Bourbon Street." Mr. Pal said his remarks were "totally uncalled for," though I'm not sure who called for Mr. Pal's remarks. While I don't agree with everything my commenters say, Mr. Pal, they are my guests and I will not stand for someone insulting my guests. If anyone is going to insult them, it should be me. What's more, Mr. Bukko cannot even defend himself because The Progressive does not allow comments. Maybe websites did not have the technology to allow for comments back in 1909 when The Progressive supposedly started but we do have such technology in the 21st century so I suggest that your 100-year-old software may be due for an upgrade.

Another frequent commenter, yellojkt, implied that I should have compared Gov. Jindal to Kenneth the Page on 30 Rock as he and a number of others did. I hope he won't take this the wrong way but I have to say I agree with my good friend Ann Althouse that comparing Gov. Jindal to a white person would be racist. If I had thought about it, I might have compared Gov. Jindal to the film director M. Night Shyamalan, like the unidentified bloggers Mr. Pal refers to in his Progressive piece, though I think such a comparison would have been unfair considering Mr. Shyamalan's career trajectory. It did occur to me to compare him to Ramesh Ponnuru or Dinesh D’Souza, but after Mr. Ponnuru called me a "feminist racist" for this piece I thought it better to let sleeping slumdogs lie. I'm afraid being called a feminist again at The Corner would seriously damage my reputation. I might also have compared Gov. Jindal to Amitabh Bachchan, the actor who is featured in an early scene in Slumdog Millionaire, is the former host of India's version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, and shares a Christian name (or perhaps, more correctly, a Hindu name) with Mr. Pal. Although Gov. Jindal does not bear a physical resemblance to Mr. Bachchan, they do share a certain wonkiness, which goes right over my head, at least from the evidence of this clip from one of his films, where he sounds a little like Jeff Goldstein:



In fact, some of the comments from my readers go over my head, too. Comrade PhysioProf used quite a lot of esoteric scientific jargon in his reference to Gov. Jindal's criticism of volcano monitoring. "Eleventeen f---tillion gigajoules of magmatic energy is no match for the home-spun down-to-earth common-sense ingenuity of real hard-working Americans!" he wrote. I don't have a clue what he was trying to say and I could not find any of these terms in Conservapedia, which as Dave S and Barefoot Bum rightly pointed out, is the site I should have mentioned as a home-schooling reference instead of the liberal, Wiccan-influenced Wikipedia. My bad, as the hip-hoppers say. (See, I'm learning.)

Finally, while The Progressive may be afraid to let its critics comment on their pages, I am not only unafraid of criticism but I am also fearless enough to highlight the attacks of my harshest critic, Anonymous. In response to my piece "President Bush's Legacy: One of Our Greatest Presidents" Anonymous wrote, "Good luck getting ignorant fools to believe this crock of crap!" As usual there was no need for me to defend myself because another commenter, Gentlewoman, immediately stepped up to the plate and slayed Anonymous with an allusion to one of President Bush's greatest triumphs. "Mission Accomplished!" she wrote. Indeed, if I can get even one ignorant fool to believe what I write, I do feel like President Bush on that aircraft carrier.

Share This Post