CNN-IBN: Should Cooks Use Kitchen Knives Responsibly?

'Brace The Nation'? (the silly-half-hour)

On May 18 CNN-IBN’s program ‘Face the nation’ was quite interesting. Sagarika Ghose asked a panel questions about Twitter. Whether Twitter should be used responsibly by public personalities and whether facts or opinions should be tweeted. Do you really believe that? These are questions being asked by a person who is infamous for some of her tweets. I have never seen a more stupid question being asked on a TV program. And it had to come from Sagarika Ghose. Sometimes I feel CNN-IBN should warn us about silly-half-hour by temporarily renaming it as ‘Brace the nation’ so we can be prepared by putting our brains aside for that period. The panellists were Dilip Cherian, Derek O’Brien, Shishir Hattangadi and Anupam Kher.

Let me digress a bit. Many years ago Bill Gates said something about MS WORD, either in one of his books or speeches. I don’t remember which but here is what he said (this is not an exact quote but effectively what he said):

We gave you WORD. You said you wanted a spellcheck. So we gave you spellcheck. Then you said you wanted more languages. So we gave you Chinese, Japanese, German and more. Then you said you wanted tables and diagrams. So we gave you tables and diagrams…. And on and on the list went and he finally said:

“..But we can’t tell you what to write. That’s totally up to you”!

I wonder if Sagarika Ghose understands the difference between a tool and the manner in which it is used. This is pretty much common sense with any professional or any grown up adult. Instead CNN-IBN does a whole half-hour program on prime-time debating the issue of Twitter as if it was some big national issue for anyone. For any medium that technology makes available there will be those that use it sensibly and those who will use it for other purposes.

It is usually the ones who haven’t used it too well who will constantly debate the merits of the tool. Is Sagarika the best user of Twitter? Hmmm! That is what probably bothers her. There are many tweets by her that have been lambasted. This blog carried a post on whether her tweets should be tagged racist. (Read HERE) There are many other blogs that have questioned her tweets some of which she has apologised for. Here endeth the lesson!

Kitchen knives can be used for murder, slashing wrists, slitting throats and if I were to go by CNN-IBN, sometimes to chop food stuff.  I am now waiting for the day when CNN-IBN will have Sanjeev Kapoor on this program to debate whether kitchen knives should be used more responsibly. Whatever it takes to fill the silly-half-hour!