Reminds me of a scene in Crazy Mohan drama. Tailor Baba Rao and Maadhu are in a serious argument. The argument gets to a point where Baba Rao gets angry and shouts at Maadhu in English and then turns around to ask Subbu (my favorite in Crazy's team btw) "inna saar naan solradhu". Subbu does not want to commit to either side and so says "athellam corrickto illayo, Englishu soopera keedhu ba".
I have never heard Obama speak. So have no clue as to what he has said so far. However, I am getting a feeling that what he has said about stuff is less relevant and less important to people who rave about him than how he has said it. We don't know whether he will make a good president or not but what we know for sure is that he will certainly win the grammar school English oratory competition. People keep raving about the way he speaks as if he were their 'athai paiyan' or 'maama ponnu'. Whatever he says they seem to go "wow! wah! wah! wah! sooper sooper. innama solraan paaren". They are like some mutant jihadi group who will kill anyone not praising Obama. Even if you don't know/care about Obama, just to irritate them, try saying "I think he will lose the next election" and walk away. You will get 350,000 million 'why's. And then there are these desi yuppies, who incessantly praise Obama, and who also assume that he is India's friend for the sole reason that he is a colored person.
Hollywood/TV Show hosts have shown that boot-licking not a specialty on one side of the Atlantic alone. Sometimes it looks as if these hollywood people applaud and praise Obama even before he has said anything. I swear, they are so despo'ly eager to clap for Obama, that some day he is going to stand and burp and fools like Bill Maher will applaud furiously. The over-hype and the quality of people supporting Obama should be a big concern for people who don't want the country to turn belly-up. They have put thamizh cinema artists, who praise Jaya/Karu, to shame. In fact you can say that America has finally caught up to Thamizh Nadu's innovation in this department and is now openly imitating it. The difference being that the common denominator in this Hollywood clique is anyone who talks for painfully long time on topics like (a) green (not 'raamar pacchai' or muslim 'pacchai' but environment pacchai) (b) atheism (c) pro-choice etc. Whereas in thamizh Nadu item (b) alone will suffice. A day will come when Arnold Schwarznegger will campaign for presidency with promise of free TV and $1 Pizza.
After living in the world of MGR/Karunanidhi/Rajinikanth - it is easy for a thamizh guy to understand that "how" someone says stuff is more important/relevant than "what" he says or really does. It may be less easy to reconcile to this though. A person could be blind, not have 2 hands and 2 legs. But if he sings a song in near-perfect thodi raagam, People are capable of interviewing this person for a plumber's job and selecting him. MGR re-giged his movie songs for election campaign and got the job easily. In Obama's case the dialogs written by his script writer was not for a movie (unless you believed Shakespeare when he said the world is a theater). I am wondering if what he says to his wife and children are also written by the script writer. You will certainly know that the "as I am suffering from fever" letter to the principal excusing his child from school - is from his script writer if its 3 page long, talks about "change" in the health condition and is in flowery English.
Somehow these simple sentences with 60,000 adjectives taken out of motivational therapy books have a tendency to win over people. Since the days of Indiran/Chandran the "unnamed interviewee" and 'suppie' were dinged by 'thengai' Srinivasan - not because they couldn't answer interview questions very well - but one wore a shirt with 'poonai bommai' and the other had sa/la Vs sha/La pronunciation problems.
Ellam "eye wasss".
I have never heard Obama speak. So have no clue as to what he has said so far. However, I am getting a feeling that what he has said about stuff is less relevant and less important to people who rave about him than how he has said it. We don't know whether he will make a good president or not but what we know for sure is that he will certainly win the grammar school English oratory competition. People keep raving about the way he speaks as if he were their 'athai paiyan' or 'maama ponnu'. Whatever he says they seem to go "wow! wah! wah! wah! sooper sooper. innama solraan paaren". They are like some mutant jihadi group who will kill anyone not praising Obama. Even if you don't know/care about Obama, just to irritate them, try saying "I think he will lose the next election" and walk away. You will get 350,000 million 'why's. And then there are these desi yuppies, who incessantly praise Obama, and who also assume that he is India's friend for the sole reason that he is a colored person.
Hollywood/TV Show hosts have shown that boot-licking not a specialty on one side of the Atlantic alone. Sometimes it looks as if these hollywood people applaud and praise Obama even before he has said anything. I swear, they are so despo'ly eager to clap for Obama, that some day he is going to stand and burp and fools like Bill Maher will applaud furiously. The over-hype and the quality of people supporting Obama should be a big concern for people who don't want the country to turn belly-up. They have put thamizh cinema artists, who praise Jaya/Karu, to shame. In fact you can say that America has finally caught up to Thamizh Nadu's innovation in this department and is now openly imitating it. The difference being that the common denominator in this Hollywood clique is anyone who talks for painfully long time on topics like (a) green (not 'raamar pacchai' or muslim 'pacchai' but environment pacchai) (b) atheism (c) pro-choice etc. Whereas in thamizh Nadu item (b) alone will suffice. A day will come when Arnold Schwarznegger will campaign for presidency with promise of free TV and $1 Pizza.
After living in the world of MGR/Karunanidhi/Rajinikanth - it is easy for a thamizh guy to understand that "how" someone says stuff is more important/relevant than "what" he says or really does. It may be less easy to reconcile to this though. A person could be blind, not have 2 hands and 2 legs. But if he sings a song in near-perfect thodi raagam, People are capable of interviewing this person for a plumber's job and selecting him. MGR re-giged his movie songs for election campaign and got the job easily. In Obama's case the dialogs written by his script writer was not for a movie (unless you believed Shakespeare when he said the world is a theater). I am wondering if what he says to his wife and children are also written by the script writer. You will certainly know that the "as I am suffering from fever" letter to the principal excusing his child from school - is from his script writer if its 3 page long, talks about "change" in the health condition and is in flowery English.
Somehow these simple sentences with 60,000 adjectives taken out of motivational therapy books have a tendency to win over people. Since the days of Indiran/Chandran the "unnamed interviewee
Ellam "eye wasss".
