Return Of The Comedy King

No matter how dirty politics get, there’s always someone to cheer you up.  Since January 30 Anna Hazare is back in action with his agitation and I’m sure everyone remembers his speech at the Jaipur Chintan Shivir of Congress. It’s just that the speech blasting Congress and the govt was delivered and enacted by Rahul Gandhi. It was like another of those regular ‘filmy Rahuls’ emoting on screen from a script. I affectionately call that the ‘Badminton speech’. Let me recap some highlights from that speech. Or on the other hand, why should I expend my words? I will allow the Numero Uno political analyst to do it for us and his tweets on January 20 summarise it quite well:

There! Rajdeep’s tweets say it all. RahulG had Rajdeep ‘hmmm-ing’ all through his speech. It’s hard to tell if Rajdeep was hmmm-ing in delight or pooh-poohing in contempt at RG’s hypocrisy. One will never know the mysterious ways of Rajdeep. Doesn’t matter! If we needed full clarity on the speech all we have to do is turn to our Power-Puff girls from the MSM. They were like teenagers again swooning over the latest Bollywood sensation. Take a look at the tweets of Pallavi Ghosh, Sagarika Ghose and Barkha Dutt.

The first is an embedded reporter with the Congress, the second is a Social Genius and the third is as loquacious an anchor as she likes to call others. Imagine, around 300 journalists were ferried to Jaipur, put up in hotels and dined and wined and they are the ones who claim to bring “news” to you. Normal courtesies like a drink or food after a presser is understandable but a whole sponsored trip? Naturally, some channels were echoing the Congress members’ view that RahulG’s speech was an “Obama moment”. Where in the world will you find such shamelessness? If anything, the badminton speech brought out RahulG as a hollow hypocrite as much as the hypocrites in the MSM. And true to his comic genius, after the speech he disappears and surfaces only to return to his normal comedian role. Once he went back to his comedy our Powder-Puff girls had their mouths and twitter accounts zipped again. The loquacious one quickly moved on to some gentle pencil pushing. Here’s how Barkha Dutt does it in her article in Hindustan Times on February 1 called “With friends like these”. Let’s read a bit.

“For political journalists, reporting on the BJP - with its loquacious leaders, open dissent and camp warfare - can often be much more interesting and lively than covering the more tightly-controlled, top-down power structure and exasperatingly opaque style of the Congress. What makes it especially challenging is that in the BJP nothing is necessarily as it seems. Take some statements too literally and you may find yourself on a political tangent”.

Hmm! So nothing is as it seems she says. Why should it be? NDTV doesn’t have any “sources” in the BJP to feed them titbits, like they have “reliable sources” in the Congress? Oh BTW, the gentle ridicule of the loquacious leaders is highly interesting and lively. Right! And the Congress is opaque and exasperating. Somewhat like the Vatican, isn’t it? But hey, who’s your darling, who’s your sweetheart? The one that has no democratic system in the party is acceptable to the MSM. The party that has a president for over a decade without change with members behaving like slaves is acceptable to the MSM. But noooooo! The party that is more democratic like our own noisy democracy and parliament is the one that is at war. If you don’t read the article with a magnifying glass you would miss the gentle scorn. Here’s more:

“Just this week, Yashwant Sinha, freshly satisfied with the dramatic, last-minute ouster of Nitin Gadkari…  said to me that if Manmohan Singh could be prime minister then as a bureaucrat with a bent for economics, Sinha, should be seen as someone with the requisite qualifications for the top job as well. But then he went on to argue that it wasn't a curriculum vitae but charisma that would win the day and in that context, there was only one man - Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi - who fits the bill. Now, was Sinha pitching for the Gujarat CM or queering the pitch for him with the remote-controllers in the RSS who are known to dislike Modi's assertion of political autonomy”?

Incidentally, that’s the first time I’m seeing Barkha address Modi as “Gujarat CM Narendra Modi”. (I could be wrong though). Note closely how the “charisma” comment is subtly used to dub Modi as merely “charisma” and nothing more. If Sinha’s statement were to be dissected properly the right thing to tell him would be that he was wrong on that part too, at least where current PM MMS is concerned. To even suggest that ‘charisma’ has anything remotely connected to MMS being PM is like connecting fragrance and great perfumes to a skunk. And then, was Sinha pitching for Modi or queering the pitch? The only one who seems to be queering the pitch here seems to be Barkha and no one else. Where’s the devil? Aha! Barkha could have asked Sinha to clarify the “charisma” bit since she had done the interview. But no! Instead, she dissects her own interview with him to suit her own persuasions. Clever, isn’t that?

As far as Modi is concerned, sure he may have charisma. But more than that, he also has a record of governance and performance. His speeches are backed by sound thinking, political timing and weight, and he possesses great presence of mind. I doubt Barkha can say that about MMS or RahulG. After all, RahulG is the undeclared PM candidate of the Congress. Then Barkha also suggests there are “faultlines” in BJP in her article. Yes, we all know she sees faultlines everywhere. It’s her favourite word. Wasn’t she going to write a book about India’s faultlines too? Wonder what happened to that, maybe double-fault (line)! But our MSM believes in “creationism” rather than the “evolution” they so valiantly attempt. Unfortunately for them RahulG opened his mouth without a script and gave enough proof that he is still work-in-progress. Watch a video of his interaction with students last week (1.49mins, also on Youtube):

Haha! “You’ve gotta stop asking your politicians how they’re gonna do it and start asking yourself how YOU’RE gonna do it because that’s how this country is going to move forward”. Well, nobody told the fearless leader that he is occupying a chair for the exact reason of answering questions from students. But then in the absence of clarity of thinking, this is the answer you get. Evolution! Another student asks him “how one can help tiny tots who can’t write a line about benefits of internet”? To this, our evolutionary leader asks a counter question “how can YOU help them”? The student starts to answer: “As a citizen I can….” And the brilliant RahulG interrupts and says “not as a citizen but as a young Indian”. Voila! There goes the badminton speech! Except for some stray channel the rest skipped reporting this not-so-badminton episode. So, just as RahulG sees two Indias all the time, now he sees two people; Citizens and Young Indians. Woe to the young Indians who aren’t considered citizen by him. I wonder if they will still be able to vote. Then RG gets into a Bimboesque argument with the student to laughter from the entire crowd.

It didn’t stop there. On the “Akash” Tablet, RG went on to say that they should ask questions to the gentleman responsible for it and not him. Yeah! What exactly is RahulG responsible for? That’s what none of our media morons who fall at his feet can tell. That’s the kind of leadership RahulG demonstrates that the Congress and our Powder Puff girls really admire and so deeply love.  I guess our Powder Puff girls can’t see what those young students can see. They really had a good laugh. Someone did say: “Young hearts run free”. Even the late JFK must be rolling in laughter in his grave over his quote being so brutally twisted and tortured.

Like I said in the beginning, no matter how dirty politics might get there is always someone to clown around and cheer you up. Earlier there was Laloo and the likes of him. After his Badminton speech, over which the MSM rolled over like poodles, RahulG has truly returned to being the comedy king. And this is the charismatic PM that our MSM bets on. Who can complain about their intelligence, eh?