Thursday, April 19, 2007

news and the media

BJB MP Babubhai Katara has been detained for trying to smuggle a woman and child on the passport of his wife. Incredible isn’t it? But then again if you have grown up watching action movies starring the likes of Sunny Deol and Ajay Devgun, where the bad guy is always a political figure, you aren’t really surprised. You must have already seen it somewhere in some movie or the other. What is incredible is how his lawyers claim that the MP had absolutely no idea what was going on. Now that’s incredible! The poor fellow has a grown woman and a teenage boy tagging along with him all the way to the airport lounge and he has no idea who’s behind the ghunghat! I’m guessing Mrs. Katara runs a really tight ship around the house.

Since we are watching all this on the TV news, have you noticed how many women journos we have these days? We have two women sitting at the studios, hosting the show talking to correspondents on site, who are also mostly women. That’s a trend no-one saw coming and a good one too. A word of advice to those committing or planning to commit crimes against women, “you’d better watch out or you might get swarmed by media persons who aren’t just excited about the scoop.”

Speaking of news channels and the media, who can miss the Ash-Abhishek wedding story these days? When we have such a gala event where all the big wigs of Bollywood are going to converge it does make for good entertainment. Everyone wants to know what the bride wore, what her sahelis wore, not to mention the groom and his friends. Nobody wants to miss a chance to criticize a faux pas especially so if it revolves around a celebrity. Here’s an idea to the movie producers around. Given the market we have for reality TV, why not have a group of professional videographers catching the amusing moments of the days leading up to the wedding and the wedding itself of course). You can get pointers from Mr. Hum Apke Hai kaun-Suraj Barjatia himself! Sell the video to a channel. You’d be sure to get all the sponsors you need. Now there’s a chance to actually make money on the wedding.

I have to add a word on American idol here. The very criticized Sanjay Malakar is finally out of the show. I was saying to myself the last few days, ‘all you need is to put an Indian on the show to reduce American Idol to Indian Idol.” Of course I don’t mean American Idol is a superior show than Indian Idol. How can you even think that?! All I mean is that what we have seen in the last two season’s of Indian Idol (with not so talented guys winning based on SMS votes) was happening in American Idol too. Almost. ;) But that makes you think. What do you think will happen in the next season of American Idol? Do you think the panel of three will refrain from bringing another Indian on the show fearing that he’ll be supported whole heartedly by the Indian community even if he isn’t that talented? Or do you think there will be hue and cry over talented people of Indian origin not being able to make it to the show because of this skepticism? Well whatever it is, one this is for sure. The Indian media will have a gala time reporting it.

Lastly. I offer my condolences to the people who lost their lives at Virginia Tech at the hands of Cho Seung Hui.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great post, i wont have to watch the news for another week ;)

Very correct about the politicians, a true case of "bagal mein chura muh pe ram".

I have a strange feeleing that Sanjaya's was a side effect of the VT attack, Most ppl were in shock and pranky fun things like votefortheworst.com and the RJ who was promoting him prolly lost their charm for a few day. Plus the fact that he sucks at country singing.

And my condolences to the families of VT attack victims. And a bravo to the community there, they have done well after such a heinous attack.

P.S. I think this comment is as long as your post :P