The Buzz is the Register’s weekly political news column.
If your political commentary goes viral – in this case, a giant inflatable chicken that resembles the president – you can rest assured there will be blowback.
For Taran Singh Brar, whose 30-foot-tall balloon spent much of Aug. 9 on the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument, the attacks have been brutal.
“Your (sic) a immature idiot,” reads one of the messages that Brar has copied to his Facebook page.
“How dare you stand on free ground runing (sic) your loud mouth making a fool (sic),” says another comment, many of which cannot be reprinted in a family newspaper. “You are sickening.”
“GO BACK TO THE MIDDLE EAST WHERE YOU BELONG!!!!!!” wrote a third critic. “YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY A MEMBER OF ISIS!!!!!! YOU’RE MAD AT TRUMP BECAUSE OF ALL THE ISIS LEADERS HE’S HAD KILLED!!!!!”
But for Ladera Ranch’s Brar, the good news is that such feedback has been swamped by positive responses – by a margin he pegs at 99 to 1. That was particularly true Aug. 9 on the Ellipse where, after four months of tracking down the required permits, he strategically placed the gold-coiffed “Chicken Don” so it would be captured by media outlets’ live feeds of the White House.
“Even people in (Donald) Trump shirts were taking pictures and enjoying it,” said the 31-year-old, who saw the photos go viral around the globe both on social media and in the traditional press. “To do something like this – it’s fun and cute. Trump uses anger and fear to take control of how people think. This took his media sucking skills and turned it on its head. Jujitsu.”
Of course, Brar didn’t arrange the stunt to amuse Trump supporters. He first saw an internet photo of the Trumpian chicken, taken at a mall in China, shortly after the November election. After fellow activists suggested it would be a good prop for the Tax March protests on April 15, he tracked down a 30-foot version on the Chinese shopping site AliBaba and bought it for $1,300. He thought the chicken was well suited to mock Trump.
“He’s too afraid to release his tax returns, too afraid to stand up to Vladimir Putin and playing chicken with North Korea,” he told USA Today — one of numerous major outlets to report on him, including Time magazine, The New York Times and NPR.
Brar debuted Chicken Don — @chickendonnyboy on social media — at the April 15 anti-Trump Tax March Chicago, which he organized. Then came Washington, global fame and endless puns.
“Chicken-hawk foreign policy.” “Hiding his nest eggs.” “Fowl behavior.”
As he was taking down Chicken Don the evening of Aug. 9, he told an interviewer from China Central Television, “The daily fire hose of lies from Trump is pretty deflating, like Chicken Don right now.”
‘Thick skin’
Brar was born in Canada to immigrants from India, grew up in Irvine and received a bachelor’s degree in molecular cell biology from UC Berkeley. He holds dual citizenship in the United States and Canada. He’s a documentary filmmaker working on a movie about U.S. physicist Charles Townes, who invented the laser.
He speaks with confidence about America’s global status.
“I think the United States is one of the best countries in the world and the most important country in the world in terms of the government being representative of freedom and democracy,” he told me.
Asked about the insults he’s received, the conversation turned to racism. Brar said that he’s developed a thick skin over the years.
“Our country has a history of racism,” he said days after a car allegedly driven by a white supremacist plowed into a crowd in Charlottesville, killing one woman. “Racism is one of our original sins.”
He sees the United States evolving in a positive direction in regards to ethnic bigotry — but says Trump isn’t helping.
“Trump has made it worse,” he said. “People take cues from their leaders.”
But back to the inflatable Chicken Don:
“Images speak a thousand words,” Brar said. “People didn’t need to read an article to understand what it was — they could just see the image. That’s why it went viral.”
Brar says he plans to display one of his 10-foot-tall Chicken Dons outside the Huntington Beach office of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R- Costa Mesa, in the next few days.
As for the bigger bird, Brar has already applied for permits for his Washington followup, tentatively scheduled for November. He envisions a sea of Chicken Dons parading through the streets, protected by inflatable Russian tanks, fighter jets and missile launchers.
