Newark is in the news. It has welcomed the president of the Hindu nation of Kailasa to city hall to enter into a “cultural trade agreement” with its sister city. Kailasa, it turns out, is the invention of Swami Nithyananda, the notorious scam artist and fugitive from India who has been on the run from rape charges since 2019. Ali Bauman reports that Newark has restored the status quo ante: “A few days after the papers were signed, [the Newark] City Council rescinded the agreement.”
I think we could turn this into a continuing series of comedy skits along the lines of the old Saturday Night Live classic ¿Quien Es Mas Macho? starring Bill Murray. In the kickoff of ¿Qué Es Más Embarazoso?, we could ask which is more embarrassing: to have entered into a cultural trade agreement with a a fake nation or to have elected Cory Booker as your mayor? Speaking of things which never were, we may want to work Booker’s imaginary friend T-Bone into the skit. Remember T-Bone?
In the second episode of ¿Qué Es Más Embarazoso? we could ask which is more embarrassing: to have named the fake Hindu nation of Kailasa as your sister city, or to have named the real Soviet city of Novosibirsk as your sister city just before the fall of the Soviet Union? That would be a contest between Newark and Minneapolis. Novosibirsk has been Minneapolis’s sister city since 1988. As I recall, the point was to embarrass Ronald Reagan.
This much is certain. The supply of material for ¿Qué Es Más Embarazoso? would be inexhaustible.
City of Newark, New Jersey admits it got scammed into becoming “sister cities” with a fake nation. @CBSNewYork https://t.co/QD0nmin7V5 pic.twitter.com/7NiizmUP5M
— Ali Bauman (@AliBaumanTV) March 9, 2023
Via Noah Rothman/NRO.
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