A story in Details, of all places, goes further than any other MSM piece I’ve seen in probing Jindal’s desiness. It paints him to be a hard-driving morph whose religious conversion was inspired by a girl he had the hots for:

“I considered myself anti-Christian,” he wrote in another piece; elsewhere, he confided that he thought Christians worshipped fish (”in the same way that many Westerners think Hindus worship cows”)…

Jindal.. sneaked away with a girl from a high-school dance at a Baton Rouge hotel… slipped off to the rooftop and talked about their futures. She aimed to be a Supreme Court justice, she told him, so that she could stop people from “killing babies…”

“I was probably the first teenager who ever told his parents he was going to a party so that he could sneak off to church,” he wrote. “My parents [Amar and Raj] were infuriated by my conversion. [They] blamed themselves for being bad parents, blamed me for being a bad son and blamed evangelists for spreading dissension.” [Link]

Unusually, it was his wife who converted after marriage:

His wife, Supriya, who was also raised as a Hindu, converted to Catholicism after their 1997 marriage. [Link]

Some are suspicious of his conversion’s sincerity:

Indian-American critics of the governor, like Ramesh Rao… who used to serve on the executive council of the Hindu American Foundation, see nascent political motivations in Jindal’s conversion. “Was the 16-year-old Bobby Jindal already so determined that he wanted to appeal to his classmates?” … But Jindal’s own writings on the subject–extensive, and largely overlooked–suggest a fierce depth to his adopted religious beliefs. [Link]

The same Hindu American Foundation dude is sore Jindal takes lots of Indian-American money but refuses to mention his ethnicity on the campaign trail:

Jindal rarely plays up his heritage, despite the fact that 40 percent of his campaign contributions for the 2003 election came from Indian-Americans in Louisiana and elsewhere. “He’s kept his distance from the Indian-American community… Not one mention of maybe the music his parents listened to, or the food that he ate growing up–nothing.”

His smoothness in speaking, not his brains alone, is what gets him work:

“Most people who border on genius… they’re not too personable. But he’s personable.” That combustible mixture–high-caliber smarts and higher-caliber ambition–combined with a smooth, polished demeanor, has fueled Jindal’s rocket-ship rise through Louisiana politics. [Link]

Jindal’s willing to change horses in midstream to win:

Jindal’s campaign tried… printing BUBBAS FOR BOBBY bumper stickers… Jindal lost, albeit narrowly. Only a few weeks later, he relocated his family to the New Orleans suburb of Kenner and announced he was running for the open congressional seat there. He won 78 percent of the vote.

Racists are a little confused about his ethnic background:

“My grandparents, they’re real old-school, and they didn’t vote for Jindal the first time around because of his ethnicity… I can’t help it, man, that’s the way I am… [but] Jindal’s just not your typical African-American.”

Jindal says Obama likes him despite his idiotic policy positions (pro-Iraq war, anti-evolution, anti-abortion in case of incest or rape):

[Jindal:] “I still get goose bumps listening to [Obama] speak. He’s bringing a very positive message to the race” … Obama offered some flattering words. Jindal responded teasingly, “Yeah, but you won’t say that to the TV cameras.” “Yes I would,” the senator said, calling his bluff. “Why don’t you do a campaign commercial for me?” said Jindal, playing along. “He said ‘I’ll do it.’”

And the mag offers up the prospect of Obama vs. Jindal in ‘12.

… maybe this is the matchup to imagine: Bobby Jindal, the brown-skinned son of immigrants, running against another brown-skinned son of an immigrant, Barack Obama, in 2012.

(Hat tip: AK)