HELLO, DALAI: His Holiness the Dalai Lama will appear in New York over the weekend, and it was almost shocking how little hype his visit is receiving, compared to his previous New York appearance back in '99.
Indeed, the Free Tibet cause (one which I support) has appreciably nosedived down the list of trendy lefty causes, what with the War on the War on Terror, the anti-Ashcroft stuff, anti-globalization, and all the other new stuff that's emerged in the last few years. The only cause that's suffered more was "Free Mumia," not that I mind.
Anyway, the Dalai Lama recently made some surprising comments, including expressing the belief that it's sometimes necessary to use violence to fight terrorism, and he was non-committal when asked whether or not he opposed the war in Iraq. Perhaps next he'll come around to realizing that after more than 40 years of futile non-violent direct action of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, maybe "passive resistance" isn't such a neat idea after all.
Meanwhile, Patrick French has a great op-ed in the New York Times about how Americans love to use the Dalai Lama to back up whatever their political beliefs are, often with no real understanding of his teachings at all. The practitioners of that weird "JewBu" fad come to mind first.