Rattled Barkha Plays Victim ...

It’s OK to string along a source; journalists are SOBs (sons of bitches), so that’s fine. Hold it, not so fast! Don’t draw your guns yet. That wasn’t me; that was Shekhar Gupta, a regular feature on NDTV. Read the last part in this earlier post. Any idea what Gupta was referring to? Umm… he was referring to Radiagate and journalists caught on tapes. Lately, NDTV’s Group Editor Barkha Dutt (BD) has been rattled by a few articles and a few tweets. She has been lampooned for calling the Delhi protesters over the Gangrape incident “Lumpens” and then messing around with unreliable information in the case of Constable Subhash Tomar. A day ago she was again ridiculed for her tweets disclosing the hospital and destination for medical treatment of the victim in Singapore. Not much wrong there except that they questioned why she supported so much privacy for someone else.

This site has regularly and frequently exposed the hypocrisy of BD and her double-speak as also of other media celebs and news outlets. It has also pointed out her highly politicised journalism and tweets far more often than any other site. Do read these if you haven’t already: “Evolving the Gandhi”, “Delhi Protests: Lumpens in media”, “Roman Agent in Gujarat” and “Gangrape,Subhash Tomar & Monkey-fisted media”. The latest ones seem to have upset her. Not just these posts but certain tweets also seem to have upset her. Naturally, BD seems to be itching to get back at MediaCrooks (MC). Only, she has nothing to get back with except more rubbish and more nonsense that has been her traditional style. You see, she’s been having a bad week. Narendra Modi won Gujarat again and her tweets, as also poor journalism at NDTV, are being exposed. After the recent posts I mentioned, some others weren’t so kind to her either. Here’s how it started.

Aditi Mittal started it off on December 27 with the humorous tweet above. Barkha’s twitter friends pointed it out and BD was upset (which she mostly is). Shiv Aroor of Headlines Today seems to have RT’d it and that had BD fuming. Seems some of BD’s fans were upset too, they called it “slander”. That should tell you how intelligent some of BD’s followers are. BD reacted as if Shiv was the one who was cracking the jokes and wasn’t the first time she had heard about him doing so. Shiv pointed out to her that Aditi was a stand-up comic (as her profile says) and is bound to crack jokes at public figures and celebrities. Poor BD couldn’t tolerate it. You see, BD wants that only she should have the privilege of making silly tweets all to herself. Maybe UPA will pass a law for her on that. With the Delhi Gangrape and the idiotic comments of Abhijit Mukherjee (“Dented & Painted women”) in the news BD thought the best way to escape from her series of bad tweets and judgements was to play “victim” by claiming to be abused because she’s a woman. That’s a regular routine, isn’t it?

Early morning on December 28 she sends out this tweet quoting the tag “BarkhaTheBitch” and sarcastically asking if these were the “new gender rights crusaders”. I’m not sure she asked the same question to her friend and frequent guest on NDTV, Shekhar Gupta, who called all journalists “bitches” in the context of Radiagate. Never mind! But BD doesn’t show the original tweet as ‘RT’ but quotes it so that it could be misinterpreted by her fans of the ‘dumb category’. And they respond true to form. Before you know they are all tweeting and RTing as if MC had called her a “bitch”. And being called so upsets her tremendously and some try to pin it on MediaCrooks! In the post about Barkha calling protesters against the Delhi Gangrape “Lumpens”, it’s not just ordinary folks but even an independent journalist Andrew Buncombe couldn’t help noticing NDTV’s nonsense. In the case of her tweets on the rape victim being shifted to a hospital abroad even NYT’s IndiaInk couldn’t help recording her silly tweet and a response to it.

Along with other fans of BD, a guy called @Sarfystweets consoles her and sends out tweets to everyone implying MC called Barkha a “bitch”. Haha! And poor BD is thrilled to bits. She thanks @Sarfystweets and wants to know if MC has guts to reveal his identity and that she will then “talk”. Ahem! Guts? Talk? BD has TV, Twitter and even has Hindustan Times to rant with, so I wonder what she wants to talk about. Anyway, one of her former colleagues from NDTV once made the same mistake of calling MC an “Anonymous, unreachable terrorist”. He had to eat crow. He learned that there is no secrecy except in the minds of those who are rattled and want to play victim, like BD does. And even that victimhood is fake and based on peddling tweets to read differently from what they really are. (If I have not posted the tweet of Sarfystweets here it’s because the idiotic tweet actually contains inadvertent, unintended ridicule of Barkha).

Here’s the actual tweet. I had tweeted the post about Barkha calling protesters “Lumpens” in conjunction with Abhijit Mukherjee calling women “dented and painted”. The tweet gets RT’d and circulated and people respond in their own way. Someone called @Dlazyone tweets and calls BD “BarkhaTheBitch”. He just happened to tweet to someone else and tagged my handle in the tweet. But Dlazyone doesn’t write about Barkha or the media and doesn’t criticise them that I know of. The one who is scathing, sarcastic, ridicules and pokes fun at the moronery of our media celebs is MediaCrooks. So BD thought it was best to let people imagine that the tweet was originated by me and that she had the chance to play the great wounded victim. FAIL! Even when someone as stupid as Sarfystweets responded to her she didn’t bother to correct him. That’s the kind of dumb fan BD likes. Now you know where her so-called communication skills and “independent-minded” journalism come from. Pathetic!

That’s Barkha for you! Wallowing in self-pity! For all her concern for women and woman-hood BD didn’t have much to say about Abhijit Mukherjee’s comment about “Dented & Painted protesting women”. I guess it’s probably very inconvenient to the Congress party and to Barkha. On most other times Barkha would have screamed “let’s not politicise this” and condemned the man. Oh Yeah! Let’s not politicise Mukherjee’s idiotic rant. So what does Barkha do? Instead of unconditionally and clearly condemning Mukherjee, she pulls out a comment of Sharad Yadav to equate it with Mukherjee's. That’s how we avoid politicising attacks on womanhood, right? Like I said in an earlier post, the social media is unforgiving. People on Twitter point out idiocy and “idionaires” faster than BD can say “Bitch”! She’s not the only one; you will find similar tweets from many other media celebs trying to create equivalence. Frankly, I don’t need to use abusive language for our media celebs, there is enough other weaponry and ammunition. Er… Who provides those? Of course, Barkha herself and her MSM community!

Is that all? Nope! Last September a prominent journalist RT’d one of my posts concerning Barkha. Sure enough, Barkha’s crony friends jumped on her like a pack of hyenas. Her crony friends called me names. I chose not to respond then. But guess what! One of Barkha’s good friends (a senior citizen) and someone who fondly admires her rejected the nonsense churned out by her and her friends in a tweet of his. Truth is hard to reject, even by people who aren’t on your side. We will save that story for another time when Barkha decides to play victim again. 

Delhi Protests - Lumpens In The Media

A few top guys in an office on the sixth floor of a semi-govt company used to work late often. This was at Nariman Point in Mumbai. So these 4-5 guys use to dip their hands in the office petty cash and order beer. The peon used to go and get the stuff for them. It was a regular practice and was on for years. The vouchers were made with fake bills and the auditors never found anything wrong or unusual in the expenses. This went on for 7 years till a junior auditor came along and found some vouchers with unfair expenses. The peon regularly claimed taxi fare to and from the company’s bank for daily transactions. On seeking a clarification from the manager, the auditor got the reply that there are no autos around Nariman Point and buses take a long time so it was fair for the peon to take a taxi every day. The junior auditor said “no, no, I’m asking why is he claiming taxi fare and why does he need a taxi”. The irritated manager again explained the difficult situation around Nariman Point with commuting. The auditor then told him: “But sir, your office is on the 6th floor and your bank is on the ground floor, so why a taxi at all”? Oops!  

If the management guys are looting the company then they have to take care of the little guy. They have to allow the peon his little share of looting. That’s a reasonably good value system, isn’t it? Be fair in looting! It’s a value system that govts share with the media too. The govt is the big guy and some channels are like the peons. So if the govt is into misdeeds then it allows some news channels to have their share of misdeeds and corruption. These news channels are the peons of the management in the govt. It is rare for the little guy to expose the misdeeds of the boss. That driver screwing his boss with a video of his sexcapades is an oddity. The guy was an unusual lousy boss who didn’t pay well for his secrets. But not the govt peons from the media, they’re paid well. They are paid well not only to keep secrets but also to defend the govt no matter what. The story in the first para is neither a joke nor fake. It’s time to take a detour.  

On December 22 people of Delhi were out on the streets protesting the brutal gang-rape and assault of a 23-year old woman on a bus. Thousands were out at India Gate and up the path to Rashtrapati Bhawan in protest. Their outrage was justified and the protests seemed spontaneous. Delhi-ites are sick to the bone with crimes, especially rape and assaults on women. Yet someone in the media could only hear of “drunken lumpens” among the protesters. You know, like lumpens who rape and assault women on buses and throw them on to the streets to die. The police had to lathi charge some of these lumpens. Yeah, why not! Take a look at the two pics below:

One is of a gentleman using a lathi and destroying the AmarJawan memorial in Mumbai during the Azad Maidan protests in August 2012. The police were kind to the civilised protesters at Azad Maidan then. The second pic is that of a lumpen element being lathi-charged by a policeman. You can take one look and tell that the lady being beaten up is drunk. Can’t you? Well, many such “drunken lumpens” had infiltrated the protesting crowds in Delhi so naturally Barkha Dutt was very disturbed. She went on a tweet-spree about these lumpens.

Barkha got feedback from her reporter that drunken lumpens had infiltrated the crowds and was naturally keen to let her friends know about the dangers. She first tweets quite pragmatically. Then she tweets to another friend called Prasanto. Both Barkha and Prasanto are “rabid mutual ass-lickers”. Don’t ask but I can tell these things. So it is safe to assume that the guy at Azad Maidan is a nice gentleman because he is “secular” and the lady being beaten up by the policeman is probably a drunken lumpen. In any metro city it is quite likely there are always certain lumpen elements hanging around in some corner, lurking for the moment and their prey. They can be on the streets, on trains and buses and even in media studios. So why is it so shocking for Barkha? No, wait! First, outside Safdurjang hospital it’s only drunken lumpens and no protesters. Dangerous, isn’t it? But on second thoughts, in the next tweet, she makes concessions: “some of the crowds” are lumpens, not all.  

Chaprasis have to often defend their bosses at all times. They may have various incentives to do so. If necessary, they can create suspicion, spread alarming falsehoods and even outright lies. It comes with the job. You try and point a finger at their boss and you will find yourself painted as the most uncouth, uncivilised character that possibly could be. Sometimes it can be mere loyalty. Let’s move on.

So the friend tweets and asks Barkha “how will social and physical disorder in public spaces achieve public order”? Good question! And Barkha instantly agrees. “Exactly” she says, like she was making the same point. Considering drunken lumpens had infiltrated the crowds the danger of some impending disaster was palpable. The protest was for security of women, to prevent crimes against women and it would be a tragedy if some crime were to happen during the protest itself. Wouldn’t it? I guess, they should have first consulted Barkha and her cronies on what would be the best way to protest. After all, Barkha does have experience of being in the midst of protests and reporting, doesn’t she? No, no, not from Jantar Mantar or India Gate but from another place. It’s called Tahrir Square and it’s in ancient Egypt. These people should have learned from Barkha about “secular” protests and how to treat women and stuff.

In February 2011 Barkha tweeted and dismissed fears about the Muslim Brotherhood, the radical Islamic group, taking over Egypt. Barkha and her Fiberals were convinced Egypt was turning into a liberal democracy. But that’s hardly the point, eh? The point is about those loverly protesters at Tahrir Square. “Woh Tahrir waale kahan aur yeh India Gate waale kahan”. No comparison at all. Tahrir wins hands down. You see, at Tahrir the young people cut across all class types. Oh, not to forget, they were “secular”. Which in the words of our Fiberals means they are cultured and well-behaved, unlike the uncivilised lumpens at India Gate or Safdurjang who deserved to be lathi-charged and water-cannoned by the police. Egypt, as an Islamic majority nation, frequently targets Coptic Christians for violence, burns their churches and is now turning into more of an Islamic state than it ever was before. But to Barkha, they are “secular” and there were apparently no lumpen elements in all the crowds she met. Is that really true? And despite the massive presence of Army at Tahrir who didn’t assault the crowds, our police with their water-cannons and lathis were far more civilised. Right?  

We had our drunken lumpens in the bus who raped and have nearly murdered a woman. Lara Logan of CBS, a woman who belongs to Barkha’s professional community, had a very different experience though. On February 11, around the same period Barkha was in Egypt, Logan was attacked by Barkha’s “secular” crowds at Tahrir. She was assaulted and molested. In Logan’s own words:  "For an extended period of time, they raped me with their hands. My clothes were torn to pieces...what really struck me was how merciless they were. They really enjoyed my pain and suffering. It incited them to more violence”. Writing anymore on this incident would be too graphic. But hey, they weren’t drunken lumpens like the ones at Safdurjang or India Gate and they were “secular”. Of all the Tahrir Square reports, I’m not sure I’ve read one from Barkha about Lara Logan.

Someone mentioned the term ‘MacaulayPutras’ to describe the elites. The Delhi protests brought out the contempt that one such MacaulayPutri, Barkha Dutt, holds for ordinary people when they are up against the govt she serves through her channel. Oh yes, if the govt is the boss it is fair to call NDTV the Chaprasi. The Chaprasi that will speak for, twist and spin issues on behalf of the govt. Not surprisingly, the only ones seeing lumpens are from NDTV as Maya Mirchandani tweeted. And the guy the channel was speaking to when the lathi-charge and water-cannons fired? Of course, MoS for Home, the Honourable RPN Singh! Yes, the same guy who kicked people on November 14, 2011 when RahulG started his UP campaign at Phulpur. In any other democracy RPN would have been in jail but he’s a minister in the Congress govt and, of course, Barkha is a Padma Shri.

Even a foreign journalist, Andrew Buncombe didn’t miss it. Vishnu Som, who was on the ground and reporting, perhaps suggested the ‘protesters have lost the plot’. Like most ordinary people even Buncombe didn’t miss the disgusting moronery of NDTV. He tweeted to call NDTV govt spokies. He is being kind. I have called them for what they are; peons. On December 22, the real drunken lumpens weren’t on the streets; they were in the studios of NDTV and in the heads of their propagandists, led by their chief-propagandist.