The Average Joe

 During a totally unrelated whatsapp conversation with my school friends, I tactfully posted my blog link where I have written a few articles about 10 years back and made a few of them read it by force. While they obviously did not have any choice other than to read it and say nice things about my blog, I believe one of them went the extra mile and said that I should continue writing more articles for this blog. Before he realizes his mistake, regrets his statement, and deletes his message from the group chat, I better hurry and write this piece, so that I can blame that chap if this goes south.

While the decision to write the blog is fine, what is it that I can actually write about is a big question.

However, understanding my dilemma, our dear President Joe has loaded the content ship with so much stuff, I should actually thank him personally and send him a free one-way ticket from D.C. to Kabul. A lot of the Republican congressmen and senators think that Joe has gone kind of senile due to his age (about 79 years - alive and kicking). I don't buy that completely. He may be senile, he may not remember what he said 5 minutes ago, he might even hug you and smell you for a long time - in the process would have forgotten who he hugged, but there is something very fundamental in Joe that prompted him to take serious actions like this (i.e. withdrawing troops from terrorist infested Afghanistan).

Let us take you folks, to the younger days of our beloved Joe <<insert time travel effects... go to sleep....done>>. Joe in his school/University days is not a very bright student, academically. Compared to the other Presidents of his time - Bill Clinton is a Rhodes Scholar and graduated from Yale Law School, Obama graduated from the Harvard Law School, Donald Trump did economics in Wharton, and even George W who had difficulty pronouncing "nuclear" graduated from Harvard Business School, while Joe graduated from Syracuse University College of Law (no "malevolent" intention towards Syracuse University) and he was ranked 76 out of the 85 students graduated in his batch. Yes, fellow back-benchers there is hope in life even after terribly bad grades.

To be fair, of course, life is not always about grades and there are plenty of examples of students with bad grades who became extraordinarily successful in life and have made a lot of smarter decisions than the academic geniuses. However, our dear Joe falls in a different category. In law school, he plagiarized a review article for a paper[2]. When asked about it, he said he has not done anything "malevolent". I think this is a very important point to note for people trying to understand Joe's actions. If you have plagiarized in your youth, it is fine. However, when you are mature enough, you probably would say, "I shouldn't have done that. That is so immature of me to do that". But see Joe didn't choose to say that, instead he said he had done nothing "malevolent". 

So when he chose to lift off British Politician Neil Kinnock's speech for his campaign speech in Iowa [3] - i.e. plagiarism at the political level, he never thought it is anything "malevolent". Another important aspect of Joe's plagiarism is that (you have to always keep in mind he is the 'Average' Joe and not otherwise) he did not care to modify Kinnock's speech to his settings. He just went stating it line by line - "My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours". You see our average Joe did not bother to change the football reference from Kinnock's line to 'soccer' as we all call it lovingly. Of course the detail about Joe's ancestors not working in coalmines - who cares about that stuff? Only the hideous rednecked klansman would point out stuff like that. 

Now I can hear you guys yelling 'Hey he plagiarized in college and campaign speeches, so what and what is your point?'. Hear me out my lordship, I am getting to my conclusion based on the several analysis that I have quoted above. You see, Joe was Vice President to Obama and he was literally sitting right by Obama when he went through 8 years of the presidency (refer to my older article on Joe about him getting to be VP) and now after a short break, he is back in Obama's old seat. What do you think he would do? He will plagiarize. Right now all he is doing is plagiarizing Obama's presidency. Go back and refer to what Obama has done during his first hundred days of Presidency - Plan for withdrawal from Iraq[4]. Given that Biden was busy with Covid stuff most of this year, he actually forgot to refer to his notes from Obama's Presidency. Now that he probably got over the Corona hump (at least he thinks so), he started looking into the notes and said, 'Hey we need to withdraw from Iraq' and his staffers said, 'We were done with it Sir during Obama's time'. 'So what - we should withdraw from somewhere, the manual says so'. And one of the staffers raises his hand and Joe says 'What?'. 'How about Afghanistan Sir?'. Joe goes 'See that is the kind of enthusiasm I like. Young man - you deserve a promotion. I see my youngself in you'. 

So my point is, team, just brace yourself for the repeat of Obama's presidency - however, with unexpected consequences due to this kind of cut-and-paste-out-of-context errors. But as Americans - we should be proud. Now, no country on earth can come and comment at us that we cannot get any 'Average Joe' to become our president. We actually, literally did that. We are responsible for it and we should give ourselves a pat on the back.

References:

1. Picture Courtesy - Al Jazeera
2.  https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/18/us/biden-admits-plagiarism-in-school-but-says-it-was-not-malevolent.html
3. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/12/us/biden-s-debate-finale-an-echo-from-abroad.html
4. https://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2009/01/22/Obama-asks-Pentagon-for-responsible-Iraq-drawdown/stories/200901220423

Raavan, Ravana et. al

<<This review has been sitting in my drafts since the day after I watched this movie and I squarely blame it on my super laziness and peanut-sized memory for leaving this unpublished. So if there is any soul out there trying to read this and wondering why a review for this movie is just coming - rest in peace -- yeah yeah... no one reads this crap anyway, let us get on>>

 

Last time when I met Raj (one of our friends) during one of our socializing events, he said that he is expecting my next blog article very eagerly. I can take it two ways, one is that my current blog is so good, he can't wait to read my next one or the more plausible explanation - let me see at least if I give you another chance, you will write any better. Raj - Whatever the reason might be when you said that, I was thinking within myself - what did I do? Now I have created this expectation, opened the Pandora's box, how am I even going to live up to this expectation.

But life is strange and when you expect the least, situations present themselves in a platter. In this case, our dear Mani Ratnam's much-awaited Raavan/Ravana. I watched it in Tamil on the day of release, that too, a night show after so many years. This is as much privilege I can give to a movie and it better live up to it.

The hype around Ravana was crazy, the dual characterization of Vikram (hunter in Hindi/hunted in Tamil) made front-page news in Tamil Dailies while BP was leaking oil in the Gulf. Jaya Bachan was actually praying to Lord Rama that this movie should be over soon, so that their pyaari bahu can give them the grandkid to play with. 3 Years and 90 Crore Rupees ($20.5 Mil) later, Raavan/Ravana is released and we went on the release day night with our 2-year-old to watch alongside another 50 other souls who except my dear friend Chin, sacrificed their sleep to watch the incredible stuff from Mani Ratnam, which he forgot to pack it in the movie in the first place.

Mani seems to be intently wiring the story with all sorts of correlations with Ramayana, whether it is the suggestion of Priyamani as Surpanaka or the transformation of poor Karthik to Hanuman. Somehow he did not have this urge when writing Thalapathi (apparently suttufied from Mahabharata), where he only links the story in the start and in the end. All through the middle, it was nothing but Gang war stuff. However, in this movie, he has felt the need to remind the poor viewer that he is watching a patched-up work of Ramayana, once every two scenes. Strangely enough, I can relate to how Mani Ratnam would have felt writing his screenplay. It is the exact same feeling that I have when I write the functional specs for my projects (almost on every page trying to go back and reference the requirements somehow as lame as it can be).

However to understand why Raavan/Ravana has turned out to be this way, needs some critical analysis by experienced psychological experts for which I have completely no access to. But that does not mean I will shut up and walk away - I have my own two eyes which see a whole lot. Note the point that Suhasini has convinced Mani to write the dialogues for the Tamil Movie. If someone says that it is to save money - come on! get real! - you can't find another couple of lakhs to find a professional writer when you are spending 90 crores on the movie! BS! It is actually all these years of living with Suhasini that Mani is systematically and completely lobotomized to the extent that not only he did not mind her writing the dialogues but he actually believed 'Bak bak bak bak bak bak' as an intellectually superior piece of dialogue that the audience and critics will find it intriguing. Well, you all thought, it will only happen for mortal folks like us, now even the great Mani Ratnam is completely susceptible.

I say Mani D the B and get a life! What do you say folks?