The Dalai Lama has dirty little secrets?

Unspun keeps telling his clients that likeability is one of the essential skills they must develop as spokespersons for their companies. If people like you, usually because you’re so engaging, you can get away with a lot if you want to. Asia observer and author of several books on Asia Michael Backman’s latest article in The Age on the Dalai Lama seems to support this contention. His thesis is that journalists rarely challenge the Dalai Lama because he’s so likeable and engaging.

He therefore doesn’t get grilled on the irregularities that happen in his kingdom. If Backman is right the Dalai Lama must be one of the world’s best spin doctors.

clipped from www.theage.com.au Rarely do journalists challenge the Dalai Lama.Partly it is because he is so charming and engaging. Most published accounts of him breeze on as airily as the subject, for whom a good giggle and a quaint parable are substitutes for hard answers. But this is the man who advocates greater autonomy for millions of people who are currently Chinese citizens, presumably with him as head of their government. So, why not hold him accountable as a political figure?No mere spiritual leader, he was the head of Tibet’s government when he went into exile in 1959. It was a state apparatus run by aristocratic, nepotistic monks that collected taxes, jailed and tortured dissenters and engaged in all the usual political intrigues.