At least we can take one thing from last weekend's nightmare - apart from a lingering sense of regret over never buying that 'Hang Nelson Mandela' T-shirt when we had the chance - never again can these people deny that liberalism is a religion. After seeing the folks who can't let Christmas Day pass without running documentaries asking whether Jesus was a cannibal slobbering over Mandela, libs have now surrendered the right ever to mock evangelical Christians again.
Indeed, I understand the centrepiece of the festivities was to be the unveiling of a statue paying tribute to South Africa's key industries of agriculture and mining, but at the last minute it was decided that a Golden Calf would be too 'on the nose'.
Of course, you can kind of see why the left has gone so bananas for Mandela. After all, he's probably the only liberal icon out there with a body count below five figures. Still, it's hardly through lack of trying. For all the liberal euphemisms aired over the weekend, Mandela wasn't jailed for '
his stand against South African apartheid', he was jailed for engaging in a murderous campaign of bombings. You get jailed for that even in Sweden.
And no, it wasn't all in a good cause. Mandela's vision for South Africa was Marxist dictatorship, with himself as
El Comandante.
True, after release Mandela was marginally less loopy than before (see, libs, prison works!), but for a supposed liberator, he's proved himself quite comfortable with the oppressive practices of the old regime and their absurd racial obsessions (see
here and
here, for examples), and indeed both at once, which brings us onto Mandela's unbelievably weak, and belated, condemnation of Mugabe.
Forget all the liberal swooning: in so far as Mugabe is a genocidal tyrant, '
failure of leadership' doesn't quite cover it. For that matter, it doesn't even make factual sense: say what you like about Mugabe, but he sure can make things happen.
Evil things admittedly, but he's no Gordon Brown.
Of course, back in the day, Mugabe too was a liberal icon. After all, even he took
some time to completely wreck Zimbabwe. Ditto, it's nice that liberals have finally managed to denounce The Bob, but it works better when the self-same people aren't simultaneously slobbering over the architect of the bigger and better sequel.
Actually, I take it all back. We can take something else from last weekend. Here we have the epitome of modern liberalism: a bunch of filthy-rich, western, celebutrards paying homage to an unrepentant thug presiding over the disintegration of his country. That's why I'm glad it got so much coverage. Ten years from now, having being at the Mandela concert will be as fashionable as flashing your gold medal ten years after the Berlin Olympics. But that's OK - we'll be there to remind liberals of the time they looked at the slowly disintegrating infrastructure, sky high crime rates and endemic corruption of modern South Africa and paid tribute to the man who more than anyone else made it happen.