His Holyness

So I was watching Larry King a couple of nights ago, because the Dali Llama was on, and I am a big fan of the Llama and a sympathizer to his philosophical and moral beliefs. The advertisements to the show went something like "Tonight on Larry King, his holyness The Dali Llama!" What they didn't mention was that the dali llama didn't appear via satellite by himself, but was joined in a kind of crossfire point counterpoint discussion with some douchebag baptist with a lopsided perma-grin and ridiculously pleasant dispostion. This is the first mistake right there, setting up the conversation as if some sort of ideological debate is even remotely appropriate for the subject at hand, which was a discussion of how to cope with Hurricane Katrina or whatever.

So the first question to Dali was something like "how do you make sense of the tragic occurances in New Orleans." Dali: "Well, as a buddhist, we believe that negative action in this life yields negative consequences." Basically, he blamed society for the hurricane, which I think is pretty awesome, but probably a pretty hard pill to swallow for most Americans. Then the Baptist guy said some heartwarming bullshit that I forgot. Larry King fires back ferociously at Llama: "But doesn't such a horrific act by God do anything to shake your faith?" "No," The Dali Llama said, and paused, assuming that this was a viable answer, but Larry King must have just kept staring at him, because he then reafirmed what he already said about Karmic action, so obviously it does not shake his faith.

Then it started to get really good. Larry King asked the baptist what himself and the christian faith could do to help the victims. Douchebag then promised to send a thousand christian missionaries into the site to take care of shit the christian way, like you would expect. Dali Llama's response, same question: "Nothing." another pause, again he realizes he's expected to continue. "except uh.... prayer, or..." here a 5 minute gap elapsed while his holyness tried to remember how to speak english. "donation?" OH MY GOD WAS THAT SHIT FUNNY.

The best part came at the end when Larry King asked the Llama if he had any plans to go to New Orleans to bring inspiration. "No," he said. "I would do no good there." That's when Larry King was like "Oh I think that they could really use your guiding message of faith and hope and inspiration down in New Orleans." Now I've never watched Larry Kings show before, so I had no idea what a total fucking idiot he was until this moment. I mean, come on, right now New Orleans is nothing but a cesspool of stagnant water, and the only people there are rescue workers and armed police. I can just imagine the Dali Llama standing on some street corner in his red and yellow robe with his hands out like Jesus saying "wait a second, what the fuck am I doing here? this makes no sense!"

I think this is a valuable lesson in how retarded western culture is. You can't do justice to 4,000 years of beautiful eastern tradition in a 10 minute Live at 5 Action News Sound Bite. If I had a gun I'd shoot my tv.