LOVE, HATE & FUNERAL!

SUNNY THOMAS

Was it the funeral of love or was it the funeral of hate that Mumbai just witnessed? Your answer would depend on which part of India you belong to! Understandably, a Bihari’s or Kashmir’s verdict will contradict a middle class Maharashtrian’s verdict, especially if the latter has benefited from the elimination of competition in employment and the former disadvantaged because of lack of level playing field.  

Hitler had a story to tell which most of us may have forgotten by now. When Hitler’s mother was gravely ill, a Jewish doctor refused to treat her because they were poor, and she died. The consequence was half a million Jews were exterminated in Germany. The darling daughter of a former Maharashtra chief minister committed suicide in the 1960s because she was jilted by a young Merchant Navy officer from Kerala. Sukarno of Indonesia and Mao Zedong of China’s Long March fame were denied permission to take the hands of the girls they loved by their parents. Personal insults often spark political movements. There is always an untold story behind hate. There is nothing called pure hate! 

For our television channels, funerals are grand opportunities for sprucing up TRPs. Some channels were treating us with `Kejriwal and nothing but Kejriwal; the whole Kejriwal and nothing but the whole Kejriwal`! The same channels were focusing on the crowds and the VIPs who descended on the scene, showing the same footage of crowds and VIPs again and again, insulting the intelligence of the viewers.  

The remote is the best friend of the television viewer because when insulted beyond measure, he could always find liberation in some intelligent channels. Rahul Kanwal’s Headlines Today stole the march over other channels in interpreting, with a cerebral touch, the exit of a phenomenon, by an eminent panel whose views merit attention.  Panel discussions are a humbug in most channels and there comes frequently one Miss Vanity who is an insult to the intelligence of the 1.2 billion people of India, whose main job is to shout down other panelists! In contrast, Headlines Today panelists (in subsequent days) consisted of Vir Sangvi, Dipankar Gupta, Alyque Padamsee, Sudhir Telang, and others.  

   

How would Indian television journalists fare in comparison with their global counterparts? Tim Sebastin of Dhoha Debates, BBC’s own David Frost and the late Italian sensation Oriana Fallaci have created a genre with inimitable personality touch. Their prodigious homework turned their interviews into world-class products viewed by millions.  

Fallaci who started as a celebrity interviewer at the age of 16 to help pay her college fee, finally ended up interviewing Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi, the Shah of Iran. The La Fallaci style of interview became something of a cult in North America — adversarial, emotional and extremely lengthy. She described her interviews as "coitus" and "a seduction" and spoke English, French and Spanish, as well as Italian to circumvent interpreters. 

In 1968, she was shot and seriously wounded, and wrote several bestselling books. Oriana Fallaci, died of cancer aged 77, the cancer that had killed her father, mother and one sister.

David Frost started when he was still an undergraduate at Cambridge and hosted top-rated shows on both sides of the Atlantic. British politicians were incensed when BBC’s That Was The Week That Was was aired in 1962-63 but soon it achieved cult status. David Frost has written 15 books and produced eight films.  

The legendary BBC journalist Tim Sebastian is the founder and chairman of the Doha Debates. The Bloomberg TV India broadcasts every Saturday The Outsider With Tim Sebastian. He is the moderator of the New Arab Debates the Doha Debates, and the The Outsider Debates, and was the first presenter of BBC's HARDtalk. An Oxford graduate, he is the author of eight novels and two non-fiction titles. 

Television journalism is a field that attracts young talent. Perhaps Rahul Kanwal’s generation can do a lot produce Tim Sebastians and David Frosts and Oriana Fallacies!  

NOSTALGIA, UTOPIA & OBAMA!

SUNNY THOMAS

Elections are mostly about mood swings. Mitt Romney tried his best to swing the mood of America by his money power, making the 2012 Presidential election the costliest in history. He tried working on racial prejudice and even religious prejudice and proved how vulnerable are democracies to prejudices! Prejudices work not only in America but elsewhere in the absence of a strong leader.   

`He is an illegal immigrant from Nigeria, and what’s more, he is a Muslim’ – the term almost synonymous with a traitor after 9/11. Some evangelists were working overtime with all their missionary zeal to defeat the demon called Obama! 

Unfortunately, the White man’s prejudice ruled supreme, turning it into a racial contest. But the women of America, who proved wiser when it comes to voting, stonewalled the democracy, not to let it be subverted by prejudice.  It is often the nameless, faceless, powerless millions who tilt the balance of power and create history.  

The happiest because of an Obama win are the poorest of the poor who do not have to subsidise the richest of the rich who want to discontinue the health benefits of the poor. So many of the poor Americans will be driven to despair if the health benefits are snatched from them, which Romney would have done to let the rich enjoy their opulent living on the empty stomachs of the poor.  

  

In the last 60 years, America has changed so drastically that the political and social landscape that once existed is beyond recognition today. In the conservative 1950s, a few political families ruled the country and it was oligarchy unchallenged in democratic garb. Today high-technology driven America of Silicon Valley, Microsoft and Apple has redefined the nation, talent-scouting Chinese, Indian, Hispanic immigrants in their thousands. Add to that the educated Blacks coming out of their ghettos to claim their pride of place.

       

 The Republicans are a bunch of conservatives who live in the nostalgia of the 50’s and want very much to turn the clock back, jettisoning illegal immigrants like Obama! The Democrats, in contrast, offer a Utopia of the Great American Dream. It’s much like the India scenario where Congress and BJP offer Utopia and Nostalgia respectively. But it’s the narrative that matters or how effective is your story-telling. 

As for the American republic, nothing much is going to change because of an Obama victory. The Republican-dominated House of Representatives will block with a vengeance any social benefits that the Administration will be planning. 

The America President’s free domain, constitutionally, is in the foreign policy – to decide how many more civilians should be killed by US drones and when to call the American troops home. Most Presidents tend to be aggressive because Arab countries and Afghanistan are their only theatre of action (Arabs have oil and Afghanistan is strategic). A peacenik President is often criticized as a weak President, and a globe-trotting President, as a talking shop President.   

   

 Armageddon could be only months away if Israel plans an adventurous strike on Iran’s nuclear installations! Then it could be third world war, fulfiling Einstein’s prophecy: ``I do not know what the third world war will be fought with, but the fourth world war will be fought with sticks and stones.’’

Obama saved capitalism with history’s greatest bail-out, he saved American honour by Osama bin Laden’s head; and now he could banish American unemployment to a great degree. In the campaign, America saw his determination, strategy, intelligence, communicative skill and team building in defeating American prejudice, which could have cost his job. 

Three cheers to President Obama, and good luck on his second term!