Tokyo Governor Ishihara, the tsunami and "Divine Punishment"

For many years, the Governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro has been railing against the Koreans and Chinese in Japan. Criticisms of his rants have been muted. Indeed when he recently announced that he may not run for a fourth term, most Tokyo residents were disappointed and urged him to reconsider. Now, one of the most egoistic Japanese politician claims that the devastating tsunami was divine retribution meted out to the Japanese people for apparently being too “egoistic”.

He said the tsunami was needed “to wipe out egoism, which has rusted onto the mentality of Japanese over a long period of time.”
“I think [the disaster] is tembatsu (divine punishment), although I feel sorry for disaster victims,” he said.

Not to be outdone, the Rev. David Yonggi Cho, the Korean senior pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Church – the world’s largest church – pointed out that recent Japanese quake and tsunami arew without a doubt, “God’s warning” – apparently because, in his view, “the Japanese people shun God in terms of their faith and follow idol worship, atheism, and materialism, it makes me wonder if this was not God’s warning to them.”

Needless to add, Glenn Beck could hardly be expected to stay out of this muscular one-upmanship! He (surprise, surprise!) claimed that the earthquake could be a "message from God". Posing as the intellectual he craves to be, he injected the mandatory nuance by pointing out: "I'm not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes," but added: "I'm not not saying that either."

Yes, there is indeed the danger of propagating manipulative yet unadulterated crap while criticizing it, yet…

The politician and the pastor were blasted by their fellow citizens. Presumably Glenn Beck was cheered on by his supporters drunk on tea. Quite unexpectedly, possibly for the first time in history, Tokyo Governor Ishihara, offered his "deep" apologies for his comments. He has of course never apologized for his verging-on- -the-racist rants against the Chinese, Koreans and other “foreigners”. They don't have a vote.

"Secular" commentators were not faring any better. According to the CNBC host Larry Kudlow:

"The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll, and we can be grateful for that," Kudlow said, quickly adding: "The human toll is a tragedy; we know that. But these markets, all these markets - stocks, commodities, oil, gold - there is no major breakout or breakdown."

Naturally, he later apologized on Twitter: "I did not mean to say human toll in Japan less important than economic toll. Talking about markets. I flubbed the line. Sincere apology."