Where has all the grace gone?
Does every line of a condemnatory edit have to contain at least two adjectives and one epithet?
You don¿t say!
Darius Nakhoonwala
No one who saw the TV pictures of the physical attack on Taslima Nasreen -- the Bangladeshi author who has had to take refuge in
Naturally everyone condemned the thugs who beat up the organisers of the meeting which was being held to release the Telugu version of Ms Nasreen`s book. Adjectives flowed like the Bramhaputra in spate.
Let me give some examples of how space is filled with anger-filled words and loaded adjectives.
The Telegraph: Ugliest, outrage, fear, grotesquely, distorted, bigoted, autonomy, critical freedom, absurd, naked, brutal, curious, creative, dangerous, fundamentalism, hypersensitive, and bigotry.
The Hindu: Fundamentalist, cowardly, aggressive, frenzy, cowed down, secular-feminist.
The Pioneer: Alarming, ferocity, blasphemous, outrage, heresy, mutilation, bigots, rabble, lethal, appalling, crazed, extremists, obsessions, emboldened, eye-opener
Indian Express: Shameful, sordid, blatant affront, amazingly, communal pandering, senseless cravenly, gravely, and creative
The Asian Age: Condemned, fascist, intolerance and violence, extremely strange, cursorily, fanatics, secular, threatening.
I can go on but this is comprehensive enough to make the point. The one adjective tht was missing was `reprehensible`.
So I have a few questions. Does every line of condemnatory a edit have to contain at least two adjectives and one epithet? Isn`t that, in its own way as bad as the violence that is being condemned? What are the editors doing?
I will tell you what they are doing: being lazy, and wanting not to be outdone in their outrage.
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