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.

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Bobby Jindal: America's Slumdog Millionaire

After President Obama's doom and gloom speech last night, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's response was as inspiring as the feel-good movie of the year, Slumdog Millionaire, about a plucky Indian who is poor but happy and doesn't need some government program to give him a million dollars. All he has to do is answer a few questions that uncannily parallel his life on the quiz show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? While President Obama and the Democrats are telling people that they will just help them keep their heads above water, Republicans want to give everyone a shot at the big prize. Who wants to be a millionaire? We all do.

Gov. Jindal's stories of self-reliance were inspiring. Like Michelle Malkin, who is a big fan of his, he is an anchor baby whose parents arrived here from India to exploit our lax immigration laws but nevertheless proved that people who are different races can be successful if they make an effort to fit in and act like real Americans. Instead of acting angry and entitled like some minorities do, Gov. Jindal was so happy and optimistic I thought he was about to bounce up and down like Tigger the way Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle did when he won the Oscar. Gov. Jindal is America's real-life slumdog millionaire.

But what really inspired me was the story he told about how people in leaky little boats tried to save the citizens of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina even though government bureaucrats tried to stop them. If the government had stayed out of New Orleans entirely and encouraged more people to use their boats or to make their own boats out of things around the house, more people would probably be alive today. And instead of waiting for inefficient government workers to fix the levies, ordinary New Orleans citizens could have patched them up using bubble gum and duct tape and good old American know-how.

Instead of relying on the government to build magical magnetic levitation trains, the people of Las Vegas should be encouraged to bring some tools from their garages and build the train themselves, the way the Amish do. And while it's true that the magical levitation part might prove to be technologically difficult for the average Las Vegas citizen, if they all put their minds together and pray, I bet they would be able to levitate the trains. The power of prayer worked for Gov. Jindal when he and a few friends exorcised some demons and cured a woman of cancer back when he was in college so it could probably work for trains, too. And praying may also be the answer to our health care crisis.

And instead of having bureaucrats build roads and bridges why not let people build their own roads and bridges? With all of the companies laying off people and outsourcing jobs to Gov. Jindal's native country, there are plenty of people with time on their hands looking for something to do during the day. It would give people a sense of accomplishment and distract them from worrying about how they will pay the mortgage or pay for health care for their children.

Gov. Jindal also criticized money that is being spent under the stimulus plan to watch volcanoes. Why would you need to pay people to watch a volcano? Isn't it pretty obvious when a volcano erupts? I don't think I need a government bureaucrat to tell me that lava is pouring out of a volcano and that I should probably get out of there as soon as possible. If some people don't get the message, then citizens with lava-proof boats can rescue them – if government bureaucrats just stay out of their way.

President Obama also proposed that we should spend even more money on education. But instead of wasting all of that money, we should be encouraging more home schooling, which is a lot easier now that we have Wikipedia. And instead of sending their kids to expensive colleges, parents could be encouraged to home college their kids, too. Many college-age kids are still living at home anyway because they can't afford to move out so home colleging would give them something to do besides playing video games all day. And besides as the hero of Slumdog Millionaire showed us, you don't necessarily have to be educated to look smart.

Finally, the best part of Gov. Jindal's speech was when he talked about tax cuts. Cutting taxes for 95% of Americans as Pres. Obama promises is extremely unfair to the 5% of Americans who work hard, too, but already pay a lot more taxes than everyone else does despite all of their efforts to shield their assets in offshore accounts. Somebody needs to represent the 5% minority of people who are discriminated against by Obama's tax plan. Gov. Jindal and the new Republican leader Michael Steele understand what it's like to be minorities so it is no surprise that they are willing to stand up for the minority of people who make more than $250,000 a year like bank executives who are often the victims of bigotry in the liberal media. Most Americans want our millionaires to do well because someday we may win the lottery or appear on a quiz show and become millionaires ourselves.

Although I have been pretty down ever since Obama became president and the stock market plunged, Gov. Jindal's quiz show optimism is infectious and I'm glad he's the Republican Party's final answer to our electoral woes. I'm so inspired I think I'm going to start building a boat.

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