I’ve always found the ubiquitous adulation of the Dalai Lama irritating and this video doesn’t do much to change that.

In it, our itinerant holy man declares that he viewed Mao Tse-tung as a “father” and Mao, reciprocating, regarded Tenzin Gyatso as a “son.” Any normal person would go to considerable lengths to conceal an adopted filial relationship with a mass murderer, but not Tenzin Gyatso: he is, after all, a reincarnation of a long line of “enlightenment-beings” and thus must have impeccable taste. The starry-eyed interviewer below is clearly under the spell of the enlightened one.