In a fascinating bit of news, it seems that the Pope has decided to reach out to his followers by opening an account on Facebook. This sounds like yet another of those cases such as that uncool middle-aged uncle of yours who’s just bought a guitar and grown a ponytail to try and look cool. Sort of like the BSNL ads which give you the message “So what if I’m an incompetent, outdated government-owned telecom service provider? I know that hip-hop is the ‘in’ thing these days!” It would, however, be interesting to see the kind of posts the Pope would be receiving on his wall:
Pope’s Wall
Big trouble – Danish chap drew cartoons of Mohammed – Middle-East up in arms – conciliatory noises need to be made, maybe even a quick visit.
- Secretary
Bible Poker Night at Cardinal Monfils’ on Friday nite – bring your own holy wine.
- Cardinal Martinez XVIII
That whole Bethlehem mass business – big cock-up! Middle East up in arms – retraction might be in order, say you were misquoted, biblical language can be vague, all men are equal...that sort of stuff.
- Secretary
In a bit of a pickle here – was god really serious about the whole “Do not covet thy neighbour’s wife” bit? I’m sure he was on to something, but d’you suppose the old chap would relax the rules if the neighbour’s wife happened to be Carla Bruni?
- Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, England
That little speech of yours with the Byzantine emperor quote – big disaster! Middle East up in arms – say you were misquoted, or that you misquoted the emperor – or just say something insensitive and anti-gay to deflect attention from it.
- Secretary
All right, all right...maybe the holocaust thing was a bit extreme. But I’ve been good otherwise...how about putting in a good word with god about a place in heaven?
- Sincerely, Adolf
Palestinian rocket hits Tel Aviv. Middle East up in arms, and this time it has nothing to do with you. So just stay out of this – the press would try and lure you into commenting – say something irrational against contraceptives or evolution to deflect attention.
- Secretary
Ratings at its lowest since John Paul took over – number of new members in the flock has reduced considerably over the previous quarter, while a record number has deserted our flock this quarter. Figures from Eastern Europe particularly alarming. Could we meet on this ASAP?
- God
Is it blasphemy to scribble on the holy wall?
- Anonymous
It seems that Nicholas Sarkozy, the French President, also has a Facebook profile. In fact, he has recently updated it to show us all what a normal chap he is – there are videos uploaded of Sarkozy playing with his dog, asking his wife what’s for dinner while discussing his upcoming state visit to Iraq, and so on. It would be rather interesting if our Indian politicians did the same and starting creating their own Facebook profiles. We could then have interesting situations such as Manmohan Singh throwing a sheep at Advani, Advani responding by throwing a stiletto at Manmohan and the Congress subsequently accusing Advani of being a cross-dresser. Narendra Modi’s profile would include “Genocide” among his interests. Lalu Yadav’s status message would say something along the lines of “Blew it big-time, didn’t I?” while Prakash Karat would simply have a sad smiley next to his name.
A couple of decades ago, El Salvador and Honduras went to war with each other over a football match. If you think that’s sounds like a trivial reason to go to war (even for two hot-blooded Latin American nations), then you’d be surprised at the possibilities of war that Facebook could generate. With easy access to all the big shots, there would be breaches of protocol aplenty, and some of them could possibly lead to war:
“Assistant Defence Attache Co-Secretary of France Mr Giles Portmanteau landed in a soup for addressing Prince Charles as ‘Monsieur’ as opposed to ‘His Royal Highness’. This is viewed as a major breach of protocol and has strained bilateral relations between France and the UK. Matters worsened further when Mr Portmanteau commented that the soup he landed in was quite bland like most of British cuisine, leading to a military build-up between the two countries.”
“The Middle-East is up in arms after Bill Clinton poked Queen Rania of Jordan on Facebook. While Clinton insisted that it was just a friendly gesture (with his reputation, who’s he trying to kid?), the Jordanians, for whom even touching a woman who’s not your wife results in being stoned in public (not the marijuana kind!), are demanding that Clinton be extradited immediately else it could lead to an all-out war.”
The other flip-side of this whole politicians-on-Facebook business would be that Idea Cellular will subject us to a series of ads about how this whole thing is good for democracy and you can immediately let it be known to your PM whether you think he should go for the G-20 summit or not, vote whether the Chinese state visit was a success or not, what dishes to serve the Malaysian business delegates, exploring investment possibilities in Ecuador, etc!