On the evening of Nov. 26, the biggest names in Bollywood walked the red carpet at the Bombay premiere of "The President Is Coming," a comedy about six 20-somethings vying to win the right to shake hands with President Bush. Among those in attendance at the star-studded premiere Wednesday evening was Bollywood's "new heartthrob" Imran Khan, who proudly posed for paparazzi donning a T-shirt with Mr. Bush's face sandwiched between the words "International Terrorist."
Mr. Khan - a member of India's Muslim minority - chose not to mock international terrorists who kill in the name of Allah. He and his co-religionists know the deadly results for those who do.
At the precise moment Mr. Khan and hundreds of others making their fortunes in the multibillion-dollar Indian movie business were watching "The President Is Coming," only a few blocks away, 10 20-something Muslim extremists began a horrific three-day terror spree.
And, like their Hollywood counterparts, the Bollywood thespians appear predisposed to blame everyone but the culprit.....
Mr. Khan was lucky that the terrorists were not aware of the opportunity to splatter hundreds of high profile targets all lined up neatly in a dark room. Otherwise, he would have died with an ironic joke written across his chest....quite a theatrical way to go, of course, but thespians - in their earnest simplicity - very rarely "get" the more complex emotions.
But like in America, the general Indian population is quite wiser than its court jesters:
...the Bollywood crowd is in the minority in India, where a majority approve of the U.S. behavior and more people like Mr. Bush than don't. Indians lean 45 percent to 34 percent in favor of Mr. Bush, according to a Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) poll taken earlier this year.
Let the Hollywood/Bollywood types blame "lack of understanding" and "poverty". Americans, and Indians, know better...
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