{"id":4924,"date":"2008-03-27T07:15:01","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T01:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indiauncut.com\/?p=2555"},"modified":"2008-03-27T07:15:01","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T01:45:01","slug":"rahul-gandhi-britney-spears-and-groundnut-oil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/indiauncut.com\/rahul-gandhi-britney-spears-and-groundnut-oil\/","title":{"rendered":"Rahul Gandhi, Britney Spears and Groundnut Oil"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’ve been a bit preoccupied the last couple of days, and blogging has been light. So a few quick links:<\/p>\n
Rahul Gandhi, who is travelling through Karnataka, wants journalists to leave him alone. “I want to interact with people freely,” he says<\/a>, “because I like to say many things off-the-record.” In other words, he doesn’t want to be accountable for his public utterances. He’s lucky he’s inherited India and not the USA, where virtually anything a politician says can end up on YouTube.<\/p>\n Mid Day<\/i> mistakes betting for match-fixing<\/a>. The headline mentions match-fixing, the text only speaks of betting and satta<\/i>. Do they really think there’s no difference?<\/p>\n Rediff reports: “Britney’s pregnant teen sister gets engaged”.<\/a> That’s too much information for one headline, no? By the time Rediff’s readers process it, the baby will out and cutting records.<\/p>\n Abdul Ghaffar, accused of stealing “two cans of groundnut oil 14 years ago,”, has been acquitted<\/a>. There is no mention in the report whether the people who actually took that oil have been apprehended. I consider it likely that they’ve consumed the evidence.<\/p>\n I’ve just discovered Ayaz Memon’s column from last Sunday: It’s headlined “The fantasy of make believe.”<\/a> Er, Ayaz<\/i>?<\/p>\n And finally, check out this superb piece<\/a> by one of my favourite columnists, Stanley Fish, on denouncing and renouncing. An excerpt:<\/p>\n This denouncing and renouncing game is simply not serious. It is a media-staged theater, produced not in response to genuine concerns – no one thinks that Obama is unpatriotic or that Clinton is a racist or that McCain is a right-wing bigot – but in response to the needs of a news cycle. First you do the outrage (did you see what X said?), then you put the question to the candidate (do you hereby denounce and renounce?), then you have a debate on the answer (Did he go far enough? Has she shut her husband up?), and then you do endless polls that quickly become the basis of a new round.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I am beginning to believe that the main purpose of elections is not to enable democracy but to provide newspapers with material to write about. And blogs, of course.<\/p>\n Blogging will continue to be infrequent for the next couple of days. I wish you happiness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been a bit preoccupied the last couple of days, and blogging has been light. So a few quick links:<\/p>\n Rahul Gandhi, who is travelling through Karnataka, wants journalists to leave him alone. “I want to interact with people freely,” he says<\/a>, “because I like to say many things off-the-record.” In other words, he doesn’t want to be accountable for his public utterances. He’s lucky he’s inherited India and not the USA, where virtually anything a politician says can end up on YouTube.<\/p>\n Mid Day<\/i> mistakes betting for match-fixing<\/a>. The headline mentions match-fixing, the text only speaks of betting and satta<\/i>. Do they really think there’s no difference?<\/p>\n Rediff reports: “Britney’s pregnant teen sister gets engaged”.<\/a> That’s too much information for one headline, no? By the time Rediff’s readers process it, the baby will out and cutting records.<\/p>\n Abdul Ghaffar, accused of stealing “two cans of groundnut oil 14 years ago,”, has been acquitted<\/a>. There is no mention in the report whether the people who actually took that oil have been apprehended. I consider it likely that they’ve consumed the evidence.<\/p>\n I’ve just discovered Ayaz Memon’s column from last Sunday: It’s headlined “The fantasy of make believe.”<\/a> Er, Ayaz<\/i>?<\/p>\n\n