CNN dumpster dives for India expert

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Rabinowitz recounts an interview that CNN did with Deepak Chopra on the Mumbai attack last week. Apparently, an expert on the Middle East only needs to demonstrate the proper accent in order to qualify as an expert;

Deepak Chopra, healer, New Age philosopher and digestion guru, advocate of aromatherapy and regular enemas, holding forth on CNN on the meaning of the attacks.

[…]

What happened in Mumbai, he told the interviewer, was a product of the U.S. war on terrorism, that “our policies, our foreign policies” had alienated the Muslim population, that we had “gone after the wrong people” and inflamed moderates. And “that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay.”

All this was a bit too much, evidently, for CNN interviewer Jonathan Mann, who interrupted to note that there were other things going on — matters like the ongoing bitter Pakistan-India struggle over Kashmir — which had caused so much terror and so much violence. “That’s not Washington’s fault,” he pointed out.

Given an argument, the guest, ever a conciliator, agreed: The Mumbai catastrophe was not Washington’s fault, it was everybody’s fault. Which didn’t prevent Dr. Chopra from returning soon to his central theme — the grave offense posed to Muslims by the United States’ war on terror, a point accompanied by consistent emphatic reminders that Muslims are the world’s fastest growing population — 25% of the globe’s inhabitants — and that the U.S. had better heed that fact. In Dr. Chopra’s moral universe, numbers are apparently central.

So what gives this blowhard the credentials to wax endlessly on foreign affairs? Well, he was born in India, other than that, nothing. Somehow he thinks his license to practice voodoo medicine gives him a special insight into world politics and the art of warfare. So why did CNN even ask him the question? Other than the fact that they knew what his answer would be, no good reason.

Here’s the video;

I don’t know what’s wrong with the video – it just worked for me. If you really want to watch it, try the CNN link.

Category: Media, Politics