When some comedian emailed me a link to our Bren’s latest foray into the Mouth of Madness™, titled Down with the Dalai Lama, I was expecting an account of an evening’s particularly hardcore chanting, but no — rather than getting down with the Dalai, the invertebrate ‘contrarian’ has laced on his kicking boots, laid into old baldy’s slats, and launched into a king-sized moan about what a bastard he (Dalai) is.

Has there ever been a political figure more ridiculous than the Dalai Lama?

Yes, but who really cares? The Dalai is a ‘battering ram’ in a ‘culture war’ with China — not that Dalai Lama supporters would recognise this. Why are these ‘westerners’ so attached to the Dalai Lama? It seems that many set store by obscurantism, if you consider the cures and soothsaying peddled everywhere — horoscopes and reiki and homeopathic remedies. Many, who have absolutely no ‘problem’ with modernity, are merely revolted by cruelty, and the Dalai Lama appears to them to offer a more humane alternative to Chinese occupation — unless you seriously believe that Tibetans are desperate for the reintroduction of feudalism and serfdom. Still others — hiya! — don’t really care one way or another about the Dalai Lama, but support the cause of Tibetan self-determination.

Granted the Dalai Lama has done really bad things, such as edit an edition of Vogue and appear in an Apple advertisemment — if he’d done Nuts and PCWorld and signed up for the new series of Big Brother he’d be alright.

There is a glimmer of hope in the CiF comments. One wag asks:

What next? Aung San Su Kyi: A Right Bitch”?

More like Your Pets Are Trying to Eat You — Eat Them Now or better The Strawmen are out to get us — we must kill them before it’s too late.