In the reasons-to-be-thankful-for-being-an-American category, Thailand has recently been on a binge of jailing people for lese majeste, the crime of insulting the king. Index on Censorship has a fantastic roundup of the history and issues.

The constitution states: ‘The king shall be enthroned in a position of revered worship and shall not be violated. No person shall expose the king to any sort of accusation or action.’ The king is, legally, above even the slightest criticism.

Thailand has thus discarded the wisdom of auld that even a cat may look at a king. Or perhaps they simply insist that the cat keep its mouth shut. Of course, the king, in addition to being a person, is also an idea, and the law is intended not so much to protect the subjective dignity of a particular incarnation but the concept of a monarch and his power. Hence Thailand is simply acting in conformity with Western countries that, for instance, make it against the law to deny the Holocaust, or say that that the idea of the equality of all genders and religions and races may not be questioned, or that religions may not be "insulted", or like the sort of hemp-sandal-clad assholes and political opportunists who say that global warming denial should be a crime.

So Thailand, like the kid in the anti-drug commercials, might plausibly cry "I learned it by watching you, OK?"

Fortunately, lese majeste holds no sway here, and we may insult King Bhumibol as we like. Being Americans, we do it by devising video games in which the object is to shit on his head, which I'm pretty sure would be illegal in Thailand.

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