Tibet: From the Tragic Quest for Freedom to the Farce of Fish Curry

Westsound Modern dubs this the Most offensive commercial in Super Bowl history, and wonders if he is being overly sensitive. I think not. It certainly is a contender. To find one worse would require watching a lot of commercials in which the wretched excess of the purchase price for the slot nearly always exceeds the importance of the product or service, and are seldom either amusing of memorable. Superbowl ads are just a feckless corporation's way of announcing they have recently acquired, or still have, a penis in excess of one inch. Groupon's effort here falls into the recent penis graft category. That's the sort of thing that happens when a faith that has lasted nearly 1,200 years is co-opted by an Internet company that will be fortunate to last for 1,200 days.

What's seen here is more than the decline of respect for an ancient and now effectively extinct culture, it's the end of the road for this particular aged and faux Leftish "cause." The brief copy of the ad as "acted" by D-list celebrity Timothy (My career is over) Hutton sums up the end of the line for the BoomerGeezers "Free Tibet" movement.

"Free Tibet" is the most geriatric and sclerotic of Leftoid causes. This hoary mind-movie has been playing in one form or another since the invasion of Tibet in 1950, but matured in the fateful sixties. Since then there hasn't been one freshman college class that hasn't been urged to wear the t-shirts and sign the petitions demanding China somehow be forced to get out. It was never stated how they would be forced to leave, it was just assumed that somehow the spirit of Ghandi or some western army would do the dirty work.

"Free Tibet" was a more romantic cause than Che even if the t-shirts aren't as cool. But with this ad at the superbowl I think we can finally say the stake has been driven through the heart of the "Free Tibet" fantasy.

Sure we may see Richard Gere pop up here and there like a gerbil spouting his nonsense, but Tibet and Freedom are no longer an operative Leftoid bitching point. Tibet is now just another tourist destination in The Peoples Republic of China; just another ethnic food court for the liberal elite to brag on back home.

Hutton might just have well have bagged the line about Tibetans "whipping up an amazing fish curry" and quoted Marx instead: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Posted by Vanderleun at February 7, 2011 12:20 AM