Louisiana Governor
Bobby Jindal first appeared on our radar screen months ago when much ado was made about an
article he'd written in 1994 about witnessing an exorcism.
(
LoS wanted to profile the man at that time but nothing came of it.) The article is quirky, but it seems to end with some doubt as to what he'd actually witnessed, a fact not mentioned--much to their discredit--by most people who refer to the article.
Did I witness spiritual warfare? I do not have the answers, but I do believe in the reality of spirits, angels, and other related phenomena that I can neither touch nor see.Hell, even we believe in phenomena that can neither be touched nor seen. Radio waves....love....Spidey senses....
Given the attention focused on Jindal as one face of the future of the Republican Party leading up to his (
now widely panned) response of Barack Obama's Sate of the Union address, we thought it was time to shine a lamp on him and see what strange shadow puppets we could cast on the wall of the
Laws of Silence.
Judging by the responses we've read to articles about his rebuttal, one of the things that seems to anger people about Jindal (other than his
hard right positions) is his seemingly wholesale rejection of his ethnic heritage.
First of all, there's the name. Legally, he's still Piyush Jindal, son of Indian immigrants. But since the age of four after he named himself after Bobby Brady (Brady Bunch) he's been Bobby Jindal. Now, if this story is true (and we don't say "if" to cast him as a liar, but we've gotta cover all the bases; damned sure not going accept this story as true based upon the endless repetition of it by the media), it's no big deal. Deciding that one would go by Bobby as an adult facing a political career is not the same as renaming oneself as a four year old. In both cases it boils down to just wanting to fit in, but in the former it's coldly calculating. In the latter it's more innocent, even touching. Kids are cruel and Bobby fits in a lot better with the Johns, Michaels and Christophers than Piyush. It was, after all, 1975 in Louisiana. Besides, immigrants from all walks of life choose new names for themselves. We've known Chinese immigrants who go by Tony, or Anna. A lot easier to get by than with Yu-Wei.
The second is his religion. Apparently he left Hinduism for Catholicism in high school. "Long before he embarked on a political career...." Uh, not really; he must've graduated in '89 or so. By '96 he'd been appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. Was he being shrewd in his choice, already gunning for political office and changing his faith in order to fit in?
LoS tends to shy away from this kind of "secret Muslim/Hindu"-type banter. He seems to have been covering all bases though, studying biology
and public policy. Accepted by Harvard Medical and Yale Law schools, he chose instead to study political science at Oxford. So one might speculate that he adopted Catholicism as an astute (evidently brilliant) young man in order to make things easier for his if he decided to run for public office. A good Catholic named Bobby, why not?
Which brings us back to the exorcism thing. Unless he was aiming for the hardcore religious right vote, this article he wrote would hardly be the thing to write if he was cynically rearranging his life to be a more appealing candidate. If that were the case he would have come out pentecostal and focused his writings on the evils of abortion. No, we feel his faith is genuine, his name not unreasonable.
Other bloggers have derided his "obviously" phony accent and delivery. We object. The man was born in Louisiana after all, and grew up there. The accent is real. There is a kind of
decollage, however, between that voice and delivery--a bit patronizing, half Mr. Rogers/half Suday school teacher--and the look of Jindal. This dusky fellow with the too-large jacket, the angular cheek bones, the dimpled smile which seems a bit strained....he's an odd-looking figure. And very smart. Which puts a damper on the old liberal truth that right-wingers are all a bunch of ignorant morons.
Not that
LoS gives a flying fuck about right-wingers or Bobby Jindal. He's just a curious specimen is all. At one year younger than both Daurade and The Gid, he's just
a tad bit more accomplished.
And on June 25, 2008, he signed the "Sex Offender Chemical Castration Bill", authorizing the chemical castration for those convicted of specific sex offenses.
All of which begs the questions:
- Is Bobby Jindal a cannibal?
- If you happened across a fat anaconda, slit it open and Bobby Jindal popped out, still living, what would you do?
- Why is is so fun to sing "Bobby Jindal" to the tune of Shelley Fabares' 1962 hit "Johnny Angel"?
- Are Jindal and General David Petraeus clones from the same mysterious source?
- Are volcanoes more whimsical than hurricanes? and
- If they are in fact equally innocuous, should we abolish the National Weather Service?