Dalai Lama Issues Apology After Disturbing Video Shows Him Telling Young Boy, 'Suck My Tongue'
Live and learn.
It wouldn’t seem much for an 87-year-old man, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and spiritual leader of a branch of one of the world’s largest religions to understand that urging a young boy to “suck my tongue” is not the kind of behavior that’s going to go over well on the world stage.
But the Dalai Lama, the leader of a branch of one of the world’s largest religions, is finding it out now.
The Dalai Lama, leader-in-exile of Tibetan Buddhism and a figure known around the world for decades, found himself issuing a public apology to a young Indian boy, the boy’s family and “his many friends across the world” after video went public showing an encounter between the two in February that included astonishing, appalling behavior by the religious leader.
As CNN reported, the Dalai Lama was visiting the city of Dharamshala in northern India when the boy approached the stage and asked “Can I hug you?”
It wasn’t the “hug” anyone would have expected. First, the Dalai Lama wanted a kiss on the cheek, then a kiss on the mouth. Then, he took things even further.
Check out the video here, posted to Twitter by Zimbabwe human rights activist Makomborero Haruzivishe:
A mere apology is not enough for this. This is public child molestation and enough legal steps must be taken to set an example to child molesters around the world.
The Dalai Lama is an public (international) figure and must be responsible for his (public) actions. pic.twitter.com/avxoRRfyb9
— Makomborero Haruzivishe (@MakomboreroH) April 10, 2023
“A mere apology is not enough for this,” Haruzivishe wrote. “This is public child molestation and enough legal steps must be taken to set an example to child molesters around the world. The Dalai Lama is an public (international) figure and must be responsible for his (public) actions.”
Adam Brooks, a commentator (and pub owner) in the United Kingdom, agreed.
The #DalaiLama is a dirty old man, if he does this in public, what does he do in private?
Sick sick world, full of fake & sinister people.
“Suck my tongue “ pic.twitter.com/21yIv5o0UL— Adam Brooks (@EssexPR) April 10, 2023
And social media users in the United States agreed. One posted a clip from a 2019 interview where the Dalai Lama said then-President Donald Trump lacked “moral principle.”
“Meanwhile he asks a little Indian boy to ‘suck his tongue,'” the user identified as Deplorable4trump2024 wrote. Let that sink in.”
The Dalai Lama tells a reporter that president Donald Trump lacks moral principle.
Meanwhile he asks a little Indian boy to ‘suck his tongue’ Let that sink in pic.twitter.com/r9se9ElyQB
— Deplorable4trump2024 (@PTRUMPFORTX2020) April 10, 2023
It wasn’t quite clear on Monday why it took two months for the video to start making the rounds, but there are some good reasons to suspect leftist indulgence of a figure like the Dalai Lama might have something to do with it. Does anyone think for a second that if it had been say, Pope Francis, in the video that it would not have been rocketing around the world instantly? Or a secular figure like Jordan Peterson?
Of course it would have, accompanied by denunciations by The New York Times, Hollywood celebrities and the rest of the usual suspects in the liberal media as an illustration of the supposed corruption of Christianity and conservatives and so forth and so on, ad nauseam.
But now that word is out, the Dalai Lama has issued an apology statement. He was just joking.
In response to a Twitter user who noted that maybe that kind of behavior is acceptable among different cultures, Haruzivishe posted the Dahlai Lama’s apology:
He has apologized here himself. What he did is wrong under any culture in any country. https://t.co/TGBg7HChcQ
— Makomborero Haruzivishe (@MakomboreroH) April 10, 2023
“His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras,” the statement said. “He regrets the incident.”
Well, clearly since “His Holiness” regrets the incident, that should be the end of it, right? How can Westerners be expected to think that a man who portrays himself as the 14th incarnation of a 15th century Buddhist holy man, a man who’s a pop-culture figure and icon even among non-Buddhists for representing resistance to the Chinese Communist Party, could for a second have thought there was anything not funny about an elderly man asking a young boy — a stranger no less — to suck on his tongue?
Well, the fact is, that is unacceptable regardless of culture, as the shocked tone of CNN’s New Delhi correspondent Vedika Sud made it clear in her report, calling the video “extremely disturbing.”
“Clearly, for a lot of people across social media, this is more than just teasing,” she said, in the particularly clipped British accent that seems peculiar to the Indian subcontinent. (The video can be viewed here.)
Viewers have called it “absolutely disappointing,” “absolutely disturbing,” she said, and “absolutely inappropriate behavior by the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.”
The obvious corollary for American conservatives, of course, is President Joe Biden’s creepy, handsy conduct with women and children — conduct that is defended, downplayed or ignored by Biden’s defenders in the establishment media.
But Biden’s only 80 years old now — seven years younger than the Dalai Lama — and only claims to have gone around once in this lifetime. (At least as far as the American public knows. For a “devout Catholic,” Biden’s public beliefs are remarkably malleable, trendy and leftist.)
But the Dalai Lama is a guy who’s supposedly trod this earth in human form 13 times already (an idea both antithetical and abhorrent to the bedrock Christian concept of each individual human having an individual, immortal soul).
He should have learned a thing or two along the way: Don’t French kiss little boys is one of them.
The fact that he hasn’t figured that out yet might make even a devout Tibetan Buddhist wonder if maybe the Dalai Lama isn’t who he says he is.
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