Well, This Is Embarrassing

By Noah Rothman

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

 

Newark, New Jersey, has humiliated itself.

 

“Earlier this year, Mayor Ras Baraka invited what he thought was the Hindu nation of Kailasa to Newark’s city hall for a cultural trade agreement,” CBS notes. “But it turns out Kailasa is no nation at all. It’s a fake.”

 

It’s probably no coincidence that these hoaxsters created a fake nation that is as phonetically close to “Wakanda” as you can get without tipping their hands.

 

This embarrassment brought to mind an episode from 2015 in which the left-wing pollster Public Policy Polling asked Republican respondents if they would support bombing the nation of Agrabah, the vaguely Middle Eastern-sounding sultanate in the Disney film Aladdin. While 57 percent of self-identified Republicans declined to answer the question, just under one-third of Republicans favored sending Agrabah back to the stone age.

 

The deliberately provocative poll had its intended effect. Everyone laughed and laughed at how easily Republican voters were manipulated into subordinating common sense to the cultural and political demands of the moment.

 

Who’s laughing now?