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#TheDailyToast: The emotional politician

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Gayatri Jayaraman
Gayatri JayaramanJan 06, 2016 | 10:02

#TheDailyToast: The emotional politician

Like a weather vane, the emotional politician is typically a sign that someone's term is coming to closure. Given that President Obama has had the dais to weep over for four years now since Sandy Hook and the urgency to institute gun control didn't seem to come up with the same fervour during, and Trump is neck and neck with Hillary, and she needs a clear run in the rating race someone pass him the tissue box and buy yourselves bullet proof vests already.

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Emotional in the unscripted world is what Turkey's Erdogan called Putin's response to the downing of a Russian warplane. Erdogan has clearly never met Putin. Putin's is the poster the House of Saud looks to for courage when they want to execute prisoners on death row. The last time anyone caught him crying was at the funeral of childhood mentor Anatoly Rakhlin and that was probably because they hadn't broken that one guy's knuckles together yet as they had promised to.

In Pyongyang, they tell old-age home pensioners to sing for their suppers else Putin is coming and then they cry. That's emotional. Angela Merkel got so emotional she flung open her borders to embrace a whole new vote bank. Time magazine got so emotional at this they put her on the cover, and because they couldn't get a photograph in which her face displayed a modicum of emotion and softness, they got an artist to pencil all that in.

There's also a fine line between emotional and hysterical. Between dancing and breaking down periodically from time to time, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has, in his short tenure, apologised for the residential school system of indigenous tribes, for the state of Air Canada to arriving Syrian refugees, and for all the love he's failing to spread around with zip-locked samples of whatever it is he's on.

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In India, we get emotional way too soon. Modi tried an AR Rahman "Mere paas maa hai, tumhare paas maa hai" on Mark Zuckerberg and his parents just before Thanksgiving as a result of which we all now have to sign on to Free Basics and sell out the internet for the cost of a hug.

Arvind Kejriwal, who has stopped crying and tried using emotion to political end, hasn't understood why his bid is failing. I mean, he called himself Modi's son and was all up for a hug, but Modi, unlike ND Tiwari, ain't having none of that paternity stuff. Kejriwal got so emotional with this rejection he's taken away half of Delhi's cars and put everyone on the metro.

Mamatadi gets so emotional she thinks everything is a conspiracy by Maoists and West Bengal is all like, ok whatever, we'll do socialism just don't let her get whiny again.

You know who doesn't get emotional? Jayalalithaa. She just throws people in jail and let's them do the crying.

Last updated: January 06, 2016 | 10:02
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