Holy cow err bison err nothing!

I guess we have all heard about the Shashi Tharoor Tweet incident by now. So I am not going to talk much about the tweet. However the incident gave me hours of fun and entertainment as people after people made laughing stock of themselves. From bloggers who jumped the gun without understanding the fine wordplay to politicians who conveniently forgot that puns, idioms and phrases exists in their language too, in their haste to grab any opportunity however ridiculous to bring down a man due to their inferiority complexes. Everyone involved in the verbal wrestle-o-mania must be rubbing their burning ears by now…or not.

If people had paused to think and reflect they would have realized that Tharoor used some clever puns in his reply and a literary nerd like him will make use of advanced English due to his proficiency in the same. If you are a simpleton who cannot distinguish between literal language and figurative language then the best possible solution is to JUST SHUT UP! Unless of course you think the general population are dimwits whom you can rile to some bile over a non issue.

Let us not get into the inappropriateness of the timing of the remark, or Tharoors naiveté, that’s been discussed to death and resurrection. Let us instead look at the whole drama and the fools who figured in it. A crucial player and the only non-fools in this brouhaha (I am not laughing at brewers, please do not sue me) was the electronic media. The media consists of journalists, whose core skill besides reporting, is a command over the English language. So what did our esteemed and educated journalist do in this situation? Educate the people about the meaning of such phrases? Of course not! That would make the issue a non issue and zilch news to air. So they add fuel to the fire with debates on the same lead by people who have no clue on the topic! Wonderful! What next? A discussion on marriage with a panel consisting of Nuns and Priests only? Or a debate on Valentines Day with panelists drawn from the Shive Sena, Al Qaeda and Ram Sene! That would lead to a very heated debate indeed! No, I do not mean a debate where the panelists sit on heaters please!

It was a relief to hear the voice of reason from the voters of Trivandrum. While they dismissed the tweet as a non issue, they asked pertinent questions about Tharoor’s work record as an MP. That I feel is the mood of the nation today. Inflating non issues, personal attacks, moral policing and rabble rousing does not impress anyone anymore. People want the right to live as they want and they want to know what the people they voted to power are doing!

Like it or lump it, the people of Trivandrum have voted Tharoor to power. Running him down is not going to work. He is here to stay till his electorate decides to give him the boot. It is high time some quarters accepted that!