Genghis Candy in Xanadu

Jehangir Pocha of the International Herald Tribune reports that the emergence of democracy in Mongolia has fueled a popular obsession with that peerless champion of democratic governance, Genghis Khan:

Now, as Mongolia is reinventing itself as a free-market democracy, it is also searching its past for the means to define itself. And no one looms larger in its history than Temujin, who took the title Genghis Khan, or Universal Ruler, after forging the world's largest land empire in the early 1200s.

Evidence of a renewed romance with Genghis Khan is everywhere. Children, streets, hotels, vodka, cigarettes, banks, candy bars, beer, products and businesses of almost every type all carry his name; his face is on Mongolian money, stamps and official buildings, and is spray-painted on street corners.

Whole thing here.

Comments

[Eric II]

I suppose you can't fault the Mongolians too much for this. Given their homeland's current status as Kazakhstan-lite, nostalgia for the glory days has to be difficult to repress.

[Todd Fletcher]

Also, he's the only famous Mongol, what else have they got to work with?

[Luke Thomas]

Kubla Khan had some dope ass white elephants and a great poem written after him.

[Evan Williams]

God damn Mongowians!

[temujin]

"his face is on Mongolian money, stamps and official buildings, and is spray-painted on street corners."

Actually there is no known painting or drawing of him.

He was actually a very skilled administrator and quite a visionary in many ways. Not bad for an illiterate nomad.

[Stevo Darkly]

"Genghis Candy" would be an interesting name for a stripper.

[Brett]

Are they screening the John Wayne classic?

[Peter K.]

What about his brother Don?

[Akira MacKenzie]

"Are they screening the John Wayne classic?"

"Saaaaay, yur beautiful in yur wrath!"

[Stevo Darkly]

Where does Temujin go to the bathroom?

The Genghis john.

What's the difference between Temujin and a Rastafarian?

One's Genghis Khan; the other smokes ganja, mon.

I'm here all week. Enjoy your waitress, tip the veal.

[Syd]

This is pretty reasonable; he may have raped, pillaged and burned, and slaughtered tens or hundreds of thousands, but he did build a great empire that outlived him for generations, and might have been the greatest general of all time.

Besides, Romania uses the historical Dracula as a tourist attraction.

[Larry A]

And down here we have the Alamo.

Denmark is the lucky one.