I’m really happy this is finally coming to light in the wider press. 

Only Louisiana could elect an amateur exorcist as governor…

It’s almost too bad - it would have been interesting to see what the racist voters would have done when forced to chose between a POC for president or a president with a POC vice-president.

Although I expect that they would probably see it for a publicity stunt and not a theratening gesture. Too bad, though.

Yeah and only the Democrats can elect a crack smoker for President.

Come on, no props to any of the half dozen Louisiana bloggers that posted on this story ... years ago?

Right Hand Thief, Suspect Device… good grief, it’s not like TPM “broke” this story.

it would have been interesting to see what the racist voters would have done when forced to chose between a POC for president or a president with a POC vice-president.

Well, Louisiana already managed to elect him governor, and I believe he had a white male opponent.

Jindal is the absolute MASTER of tokenism and the (apologies in advance for using these terms) oreo/apple/banana/“white on the inside” approach to cultural assimilation.

We’re talking about somebody who came home his first day of Kindergarten with the grand idea to change his name from Piyush to Bobby.  Converted to Catholicism in high school, for all I can tell either because All The Cool Kids Are Catholic (which is true in Louisiana) or because he was a brown male Tracey Flick who thought he wouldn’t have a chance at a prestigious career without having either the social capital or conservative approval that accompanies devout Catholicism in Louisiana.  Even his marriage hits the perfect tokenistic/assimilationist note—she’s Indian, so as not to freak the racists who are against ‘miscegenation’, but she has a perfect combination of physical features that would allow her to pass as Cajun; in fact she has such a strong resemblance to one of my aunts that I wondered at first if we weren’t related.

He’s basically a POC version of Jim McGreevey.  Someone who sacrificed his entire personality so as to be accepted by the prevailing culture and fulfill his insane ambitions. 

I have no illusions that republicans wouldn’t vote for him, or that great numbers of conservatives would forfeit their votes rather than choose a ticket that involved Jindal in particular.

Work it!

He had three white male opponents, actually, which was a big part of the problem.  The state democratic party didn’t have their shit together, and couldn’t effectively consolidate the “dear sweet Jesus anyone but Jindal” vote.

According to Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church only an ordained priest, with the specific permission of a bishop and only after a complete medical and psychological review of the subject, may perform an exorcism.

As a cradle Catholic, that was my first thought, too.  Only Protestants do their own exorcisms.

Well, but anyone taking over from Dick Cheney as Vice President would pretty much have to be an exorcist, wouldn’t they?

Can I just say:  what the hell is up with Republicans and the weird half-smile?  Cheney does it; McCain does it; now Jindal.  Cheney and McCain may have medical excuses—what’s Jindal’s excuse?

Yeah and only the Democrats can elect a crack smoker for President.

If racist lies are the best you’ve got, you may want to just shut up and let everyone else go on their way.  “Better to be thought a fool…” and all that.

Yeah and only the Democrats can elect a crack smoker for President.

Seems only fair since you guys elected a cocaine addict and an alcoholic as President and VP.

The funniest thing about this is that there are about a million or so Evangelicals who are going to read this and say,
“Weird.  Too Weird for me.  I’ll NEVER vote for this guy.  He’s completely Catholic!!”

Opoponax,

I’m just going to say that we don’t know exactly what Mr. Jindal’s reasons for conversion were.  As much as I find the Catholic church to be an oppressive institution, I know that the structure and ritual and community are powerful draws for a lot of people.  They were for me for a long time.  I also think it’s insulting to insinuate that he ‘picked’ his wife so she’d look fairly white while still being Indian.  It’s ascribing way too many bad motives way to readily.

That said, the man still seems crazy.

One of my favorite authors ever was M Scott Peck.
Maybe just me but -for me-altogether sensible even inspirational.
And he wrote not just Road less Traveled but also
People of the Lie..
which is a LOT about exorcism and parri passu... ‘possession’.
And the thing they call Human-Evil

My own thought was always that these poor folks had been born
way over onto the sociopathic/narcissistic tail of the curve and migrated,
as they are prone - to the dark-side.
Think Richard Cheney and like, Machiavelli? And countless other really bad actors

Anyways here’s this really thoughtful Psychiatrist who went full-bore
into the whole voodoo thing…so much so that in fact he also and
eventually migrated into Catholicism because -I think I remember this-
they have so much embedded institutional experience with spiritual evil.
[Last sentence can be taken at least two ways, but I’m totally ok with that]

So I always wondered.

He had three white male opponents, actually, which was a big part of the problem.  The state democratic party didn’t have their shit together, and couldn’t effectively consolidate the “dear sweet Jesus anyone but Jindal” vote.

Ah but sadly he still got a majority.  The way our elections work here in LA is that it’s an open field in the first round (not just one candidate per party), and if no one gets >50%, then there’s a runoff election between the top two.  Jindal finished with 54% of the votes.  So even consolidating the “anyone but jindal” vote wouldn’t have helped. 

Republicans will definitely vote for their ideology over their preferred skin color. I think they actually like it when a POC enthusiastically trumpets their side, lets them pretend they’re not racist people in a racist party. This election led to some attempts by Democrats (which made me very sad) to rile the racist sentiment of conservatives by publicly referring to him as “Piyush.”  Which is stooping to a level they should be ashamed of, and still, it didn’t work.

Hmm.  McCain’s old enough to play Father Merrin to Jindal’s Father Karras, now that I think about it.  This could work.

McCain/Jindal 2008: THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!

I’m just going to say that we don’t know exactly what Mr. Jindal’s reasons for conversion were.  As much as I find the Catholic church to be an oppressive institution, I know that the structure and ritual and community are powerful draws for a lot of people.  They were for me for a long time.

A lot of my understanding of Jindal’s motive to convert comes from shared experience.  I grew up a non-catholic minority in predominantly Catholic south Louisiana, and yes, it’s very easy to feel left out watching all the other kids share in a particular community you may not even entirely understand.  And of course the Catholic church dominates so heavily that there are people in Louisiana who aren’t aware that any other religion, even any other denomination, exists.  Which can be really alienating—I’ve seriously been in the situation where I was talking to someone who assumed that because I wasn’t Catholic, I must be an atheist.  .  So I understand a lot of the things Jindal must have gone through as a child. 

Maybe this is judgmental of me, but I don’t have a lot of respect for people who are willing to completely abandon their entire identity just to fit in to the expectations of other people, or to assimilate or make themselves more palatable to others.  And understanding the Catholic hegemony of where both of us grew up, I can’t think of a whole lot of other reasons to just up and decide (as a teenager) that you don’t want to be Hindu, you want to be Catholic.  It’s kind of like if you were Jewish, grew up in Salt Lake City, and just “happened” to find that you felt drawn to Mormonism.

I also think it’s insulting to insinuate that he ‘picked’ his wife so she’d look fairly white while still being Indian.  It’s ascribing way too many bad motives way to readily.

Why?  That’s what career politicians do.  I actually don’t think it would have been all that odd for him to choose a wife who fit a certain role.  What really bothers me about it is the fact that his wife was very obviously cast to play to certain really ugly aspects of conservative culture in Louisiana.  Almost everything about Jindal’s life screams, “I am so megalomanaiacally ambitious that I’m willing to throw away any real part of who I am in order to cater to a bunch of cretinous bigots who are actually bigoted against me!“eti

Rea wins.

Ah but sadly he still got a majority.  The way our elections work here in LA is that it’s an open field in the first round (not just one candidate per party), and if no one gets >50%, then there’s a runoff election between the top two.  Jindal finished with 54% of the votes.  So even consolidating the “anyone but jindal” vote wouldn’t have helped.

Yeah, I know, I live here too   If the Dems had rallied behind Boasso or Campbell, they may have been able to take it to a runoff, and then the DNC could have helped out with ads, or something.  But the fact we had multiple candidates in the race meant we looked like we didn’t have our shit together, plus Blanco didn’t give us any legs to stand on.

I think the amazing thing in this day-and-a-half burst of Jindal coverage is that no local newspaper has been nearly this critical, ever, and this guy’s been in politics since the Foster administration.  Oh, and the lack of citations to local LA/NOLA bloggers has been ...conspicuous, to say the least.

Like the story about the priest who wouldn’t officiate the wedding of the man who might not be able to have children, I think this is another great tale of someone taking their religion seriously.  In this case, Mr. Jindal got his religious teachings wrong, but at least he identified the problem: Satan!

Cancer, suicidal thoughts, being handicapped, whatever: it’s all something that happens when we aren’t pure enough to be equal to the holy folks.  If that’s the message of religions, then atheism becomes a better and better option.

“It sounds like Jindal has a bright future as a competitor of Benny Hinn.”

Is thinly-veiled racism *really* needed?