Would the Islamic extremists attempt to lionize their leader by emblazoning an image of him soaked in Photoshop bukkake upon the Pride Flag?
At the unveiling of Mr. Gingrich's official portrait in the Capitol Hill statuary hall last week, Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, lionized him as the man who had "led the Republicans out of the wilderness into the promised land".
He has been a lightning rod of a leader, lionized by some within his country for delivering a modicum of development to certain parts of northern Sudan but vilified by Western leaders and human rights groups — and many of his own people — for devising repressive and often brutal policies, including the counterinsurgency campaign in Darfur.
White nationalists have lionized the brutal leader as a hero who stands up to Zionists in Israel and purges Islamic terrorists from his country.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, former supporter of her husband Bill's racist demolition of the social welfare safety net for millions of working class and poor families in the 1990s, was being lionized as a leader in civil rights.
World leaders lionized him; he would soon be knighted.
In Africa, President Bill Clinton once lionized such "new African leaders" as President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, each of whom has since turned in a disturbingly authoritarian direction.
It's natural to adulate and lionize a vibrant leader violently cut down, but it's the thin end of the wedge.
That all the books and articles on the financial crisis and the recession might have had an effect — that people might see the economic downturn as a reflection on the individuals who were, a few years back, lionized as the economy's leaders — is inconceivable to the class-war complainers.
The story teaches an old lesson: It's virtually impossible to overstate the comical hypocrisy of our leaders, especially those lionized to the point of canonization by a credulous media in search of uplift.
However lionized Washington was as a military leader, he was far more wishy-washy where slavery was concerned.
