CNN-IBN & NDTV - The Lying Macaulay Cousins

There used to be that old graphic joke that was widely circulated on the net. It was about the bosses asking you to rate your own performance and seeking your own salary raise. All you had to do was click a button and fill up a form. Only problem was that when you tried to click the button it moved away and your cursor or mouse kept chasing the button all over the screen till you realised you’ve been pranked. Most of us have been pranked with it sometime or the other. This prank became popular in the political domain to ridicule election candidates. For the last 2 centuries there’s a website that lists all of Rahul Gandhi’s achievements and those of his ancestors; www.rahulgandhiachievements.com. It’s a ‘comprehensive guide’ to all of RahulG’s achievements in life as the site’s tagline says. Not happy with this, the Congress eNREGA team members (a team now headed by Shashi Tharoor) came up with a counter-site called NarendraModiPlans.Com. This was about NaMo’s plans if he were to become PM. This is how it looked with the ‘Get Details’ button as the prank.

The site has since been pulled but it was just a humorous site to ridicule NaMo and there wasn’t anything wrong in it. After all, politics without ridicule and humour is no fun at all. Such gentle humour, even if offensive to some, must always be welcomed. Even politicians take pride if gentle fun is poked at them. Only the most worthless and useless politicians would have no humour directed at them. The only thing that is murky about this site is that it seems some media cronies were hand-in-glove with the ones who created the site. Our very own Scoopendra Chaubeji of CNN-IBN was among the first to tweet about the site and publicise it. He must have discovered the site through his “sources” through which he routinely scoops a lot of breaking stories. We can now reasonably suspect that CNN-IBN is part of the Congress’ eNREGA social media team. So once the NaMo fans traced the site’s builders, the ones who put up the site pulled it and now it’s gone. What a pity!

Not just that. The site’s creator started playing victim and claimed being threatened and so on. That is the real nonsense part. Some people may be annoyed with such humour (that’s the intention) but nobody would go as far as threatening someone for a silly site. You see, even Ruchica Tomar of Headlines Today was disappointed. She then tweeted that the RahulGandhiAchievements site was also not working. This site has been blank for the last 200 years or so and we are all waiting for it to fill up someday in 2150 when RahulG is likely to mature and have some achievements to his credit. But what raises suspicion of media folks being involved in the NaMo plans site is the sympathy and outrage of the original media-bimbo and she tweeted thus:

The absolute category-5 moron that she is, Sagarika Ghose half the time doesn’t think before she writes or says anything. Observe carefully. She equates attacks on UPA with attacks on Modi. This is how she keeps giving us proof over and over again that God too can be lazy and forgot to bestow her with some brains. The UPA is an entity and a political alliance which is the ruling party and Modi is an individual. How does attacking an entity like UPA get to be equated with attacking an individual? But that is their carefully crafted crime. When it comes to UPA or Congress they will attack the party or alliance. They will not attack Sonia Gandhi who is responsible for the entire mess that the country is in. But when it comes to Modi, individual attacks on him, tarring him, mindlessly discrediting everything he says is game for them. For the whole sequence of the story just read @sureshnakhua’s storified piece.

This is why it is right for NaMo supporters to lampoon this bimbo and the entire media for selectively targeting Modi as an individual but mildly targeting the party in power (UPA) when it comes to Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi. I’ve said before, the moment they mention “Gandhi” our media celebs pee in their pants and skirts. And if CNN-IBN is busy perpetrating lies can their colonial cousins be far behind? These Macaulay sisters never miss a chance. Here’s NDTV once again deleting a page from their website. “Love has this nasty habit of disappearing overnight, your lips are moving, I cannot hear… You don’t look different but you have changed, I’m looking through you, you’re not the same”. That describes NDTV’s frequently disappearing pages perfectly. Doesn’t it? **

NDTV posted a spurious report about the Hyderabad rally of NaMo where there is an entrance fee of Rs.5 to listen to his speech. Of course, if not for anything else, at least NaMo’s speeches are a treat for anyone. I’m sure even their group-editor Barkha Dutt secretly watches and listens to his speeches and wishes she had such popularity instead of the tag of Radia-girl. Okay, here’s what they posted:

Isn’t that a typical NDTV headline? Now this fraud-loving channel also acts a mouth-feeder to the Congress party and it’s spokies. Naturally, Manish Tewari started barking early on about how Modi is lower priced than cinema tickets and how this act of his shows blah blah. Everyone quickly joined in to condemn Modi and BJP for reducing politics to mere commerce. Although, I sincerely wonder if anyone would pay to even see Manish Tewari dancing as a bar-girl. There is simply no worth in anything he utters, just as most reports of NDTV must be treated with suspicion. Nowhere in this NDTV report does it mention that the Rs.5 was a token collection for the Uttarakhand Relief Fund. It’s a first in Indian politics that people are willing to pay to listen to a politician. Usually, the Congress is known to pay people and feed them food to attend their rallies. No wonder it shocks them and the likes of Manish Tewari.

However, in their enthusiasm to condemn Modi with lies both NDTV and the Congress forgot something. It was Mahatma Gandhi who started the practice of raising funds by charging a small fee for his autograph. Well, he used to charge Rs.5 too. If you do a minor math you will also realise that Rs.5 in the Mahatma’s would probably be as good as Rs.500 in the current times. His grandson, Arun Gandhi, writes that he used to help in collecting these funds. So like the impatient fools that they are, both NDTV and Congress, particularly Manish Tewari, indirectly ended up lampooning the Mahatma too. When the facts came out all these charlatans scrambled back into the holes they crawled out from and NDTV once again deleted a report.

The Macaulay sisters, NDTV and CNN-IBN, will continue to peddle their lies and their mischief till Elections 2014. They desperately want Modi and the BJP to lose because, as Modi himself puts it, their “Roji-Roti” comes from abusing him. That these colonial cousins will faithfully do for their bosses. After ending up with egg on their faces, the Congress, NDTV and CNN-IBN have now to deal with a new site called UPAPlans.Com. Enjoy!

** Lyrics from the song “I’m looking through you” by The Beatles.