Lazy but wordy
First the Telegraph went into pontificatory mode. Then it struck the handloom sari, big bindi, bleeding heart liberal note.
DARIUS NAKHOONWALA returns.
After almost a decade, The Hoot revives its critical take on newspaper editorials.
You don’t say!
Darius Nakhoonwala
On August 26, the Telegraph wrote a ridiculously confused editorial on juveniles on sexual rampage. "Rape and abduction of women by juveniles have increased in the past decade by 143 and 380 per cent respectively - phenomenally higher than the rise in juvenile theft and murder." It forgot to mention on what base. Armed with these statistics, it went into pontificatory mode. "It is time to take a dispassionate look at Indian society's relationship with 'childhood'." Then it struck the handloom sari, big bindi, bleeding heart liberal note: "When do Indian adults like to regard and treat, say, a 16-year-old as a child, and when does it become inconvenient to do so? And how might these shifting perceptions of when a young person may or may not be a child affect his or her sexual behaviour?" There followed a homily and hey presto! the edit was over.
On the 27th, it wrote another lazy edit. This was on that wretched enclave between India and Bangladesh and the land border agreement. It wasn't clear whether it wanted to help the people stuck in those enclaves more or Sheikh Hasina Wajed who has generally been friendly to India. "It will have a particularly negative fallout for the political fortunes of Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who faces a tough national election in a few months. The opposition to the agreement is also unkind to the people living on the border." The prescription was vapid. "Such issues need to be freed from the shadow of party politics."
On the 29th it chose a good topic, namely, Mr Ratan Tata's views on India, today. But where was the need for the four sentence, 56 word intro: "There is frankness and there is discretion. Often the two are seen to be in contradiction. Discretion is misinterpreted as tact, even as disingenuity. But frankness is not always an absolute virtue. There are occasions when it needs to be tempered with discretion because of the context or the position of the person making the utterances?"
Then it asked whether Mr Tata should have said what he did. This after having said "Ratan Tata's recent statements about the state of the Indian economy and the plight of the Indian political leadership were in substance and in spirit flawless." Then it praised him for 125 words. Then it "endorsed" him. Then it rebuked him. "Mr Tata's views are correct and honest but they were perhaps better articulated in-camera than on camera. There are times when discretion is the better part of frankness."
On the 31st, its edit was on Zubin Mehta's concert in Kashmir. Its first paragraph was on what a wonderful thing music is and all of 227 words long. Here's a sample sentence: "As a phenomenon made up of harmony and rhythm created by a number of people playing and singing together, polyphonic or symphonic music is equally dependent on disharmony and dissonance, just as it plays itself out, like history, in that most mortal of dimensions - time."
On the 4th, it did it again, the long intro bit. The edit was on Syria but turned out to be an attack on the CPM. And the intro? Here it is: "Anti-Americanism is the aphrodisiac for the comrades... it threatens to organize large scale demonstrations in Calcutta if the US attacks Syria…if one is a comrade indoctrinated in that great ideology called anti-imperialism then a protest march is in order…but woe betide the person who suggests that, by the same logic, the comrades should have marched against the Soviet invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan."
Obama, I am told, has blown a quiet kiss to the Telegraph.
