What got their goat

It truly is cathartic moment in Indian Media History, first Sanghvi, then Barkha and finally the man who once described himself to have the most important job in India after the Prime Minister, former Chief Editor of Times of India, Dileep Padgaonkar, this is like the high priest of Political Correctness abandoning religion and converting to atheism. So what got their goat, Dileep tries to say it all in this op-ed piece, well not quite all, he had to slip in a tiny bit of political correctness into this as well.

In a comment piece in the DNA Online edition http://dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1018113&catid=19 titled “End of Political Correctness” Dileep attempts to take a detached view of the happenings of the last 3 weeks, comes close to admitting how Left of Centre the media has always been, tries to retain a sheen of moral righteousness by invoking the “Liberal” epithet rather liberally I must say and then does great disservice to the title of his piece by resorting once again to some Hindutva bashing rather than focus on the subject hand.

We reproduce the article in full with Offstumped responses embedded and take great pleasure in roasting the Left of Centre Media Establishment and in toasting Offstumped’s goal of a Right of Centre Reality Check finally finding its place in the fourth estate.

Offstumped Comment: Well first comes the admission of guilt, with no wishy washy excuses

Most editors and columnists writing in the English-language press have seldom missed a chance to assert their liberal and secular credentials. (I should know; I’m one of them.)

Offstumped Response: This is a truly “AHA“ moment for Offstumped and also those who believed that Indian Media had a left of centre bias. Next comes the confession.

For decades they berated Hindu belligerence but chose to remain coy when they had to contend with Muslim fanaticism. Out of a heightened sense of political correctness, they reckoned that the extremism of the majority community was far more pernicious than the extremism of the minorities. The reason? It would spell the advent of Hindu fascism.

Offstumped Response: There you go folks the shameless media admitting how it insulted our intellect and did not respect our judgement and arrogated to itself the right and authority to decide for us what was far more pernicious and what was not and decided to feed us ignorant consumers of information and opinion what it deemed fit for our appetite and digestion. This reflects very poor judgement by the media of its audience and confirms Noam Chomsky’s theory that Tacit Intellectual Collusion by the Media can actually Manufacture Consent. Shame on you Indian Media, Shame on you.

In the past fortnight however more and more liberal voices have begun to denounce Muslim hot-heads, and their ‘secular’ friends in the political establishment, with unabashed vigour

Offstumped Response: The reference of course to Vir Sanghvis piece that Offstumped critique earlier. “Unabashed Vigour“ well I need to see that. Offstumped has reviewed the editorial pages of most leading media outlets but is yet to see evidence of Unabashed Vigor, so take that with a pinch of salt.

The former are seen to pursue an ummah-driven agenda while the latter are believed to engage in a cynical exercise to build their vote banks. And both are accused of neglecting the genuine problems plaguing the Muslim community: education, acquisition of skills, job opportunities, gender equality…

Offstumped Response: Belated realization, however not very credible coming from the media. Offstumped had analyzed Editorial Commentary of the Hindu last year in a post on O3, and you would see that the media’s track record was no better than those it deems now to be critical of, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

This shift in the attitude of liberals began in earnest after the 9/11 outrage in the United States and continued to gather momentum after every successive terrorist attack in the world.

Offstumped Response: Baloney, lock, stock and barrel a load of horseshit. Who is referring to, the same op-ed columnists who in piece after piece criticized the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the same Arundhati Roy’s who claimed that the U.S. had bombed Afghanistan to the Stone Age, which btw makes one wonder how great a place the Stone Age what with women exercising the franchise and men getting to shave their beards for a change. Mr. Padgaonkar, we can see you are desparate to make ammends for past mistakes but this one just doesnt stick. We did not see the Intellectual Clarity nor did we see the Intellectual Courage to stand up and be counted while calling a spade a spade, the one notable exception of course has been the Indian Express and Shekhar Gupta, apart from him none in the mainstream till last week even acknowledged this line of thought. While some like Barkha continue to hold these positions.

Willy-nilly a link was established between the suffering heaped on innocents abroad and the depredations of the terrorists in India. At stake in both cases was the internationalisation of jehadism.

Offstumped Response: Willy-nilly the link being established here is for an exit strategy to folks Mr. Padgaonkar who desperately seek to retract from earlier positions.

It therefore stood to reason that the US-led ‘war on terror’ would find favourable echoes in India. And this, over and beyond the confines of the Sangh Parivar. That the US tied itself up in knots in the war did serve to dampen India’s initial response. One evidence of this was the country’s refusal to be associated with the emergence of Islamophobia in the West.

Offstumped Response: Who is he talking about when he refers to the country’s refusal. Mr. Padgaonkar you havent learnt your lesson yet. It is this same arrogance and intellectual superiority that landed you in trouble in the first place. The country did not vote on whether it wants to be or does not want to be associated with the emergence of Islamophobia in the West, nor have you in the media been voted spokesperson to arrogate to yourself the authority to speak on behalf of the country. On the basis of what are you making these sweeping claims.

What seems to have got the goat of the liberals were the reactions of Muslim hot-heads and of their ‘secular’ mentors on three issues: the controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammad, India’s stance on Iran’s nuclear designs and the Bush visit. On the first count, they argued in substance, India had nothing to do with the cartoons. Indeed, no public figure and no newspaper had endorsed the view that the controversy was all about free speech. Against this background, the statement of a minor Muslim minister in Uttar Pradesh publicly offering a hefty reward to anyone who beheaded the Danish cartoonist came as a rude shock. Could there have been any doubt at all that this was incitement to murder? The minister received no reprimand, let alone marching orders, from Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. The conjunction of ummah-driven politics and vote bank-driven politics became all the more apparent on the Iran issue. Until now our foreign policy has by and large not fallen prey to domestic political battles. But now a section of the citizenry, guided by religious considerations, thought it fit to challenge India’s policy on Tehran’s obduracy on nuclear inspections.

Offstumped Response: Aha, there you go.

Matters reached a head when the same considerations were brought into play to protest against the Bush visit. Liberal opinion regarded the angry demonstrations staged during the presidential visit as a flagrant attempt to give pan-Islamic solidarity precedence over the national interest.

Offstumped Response: Mr Padgaonkar is setting himself up for some serious trouble with Barkha. See this is the problem with the left of centre media elites, they have got so used to this elitism that they cant get away without using fancy adjectives to describe themselves in the 3rd person. So now the interesting thing here to note is if Barkha who also claims to be a Liberal, agrees with Mr. Padgaonkar’s herd of Liberals. This Liberals vs Liberals shadow boxing will be fun to watch in the coming days.

NOW COMES THE KNOCKOUT PUNCH

Against this backdrop, the terrorist attacks in Varanasi proved to be the proverbial last straw. Liberal opinion was convinced that the upsurge of Muslim radicalism, loudly claiming its affinity with the ummah, and the cachet of respectability it received from certain ‘secular’ political formations, had created an altogether novel situation for the country. It portended an eruption of communal tensions which would slow down economic growth and damage the nation’s security interests.

Offstumped: There you go the proverbial connection coming from the liberal secular mouthpiece agreeing with Offstumped

But here is the rub. Sensing the shift in the national mood, the BJP was quick to galvanise public opinion in favour of minorityism. Lal Krishna Advani’s sees his proposed rath yatra as the effective stratagem to precipitate his party’s return to power. This could well be his last chance to fulfil his prime ministerial ambitions. Given the mood in the country, the stratagem might work. But at what cost? Should the rath yatra raise the communal fever, should it lead to riots and more terrorist attacks, you can as well bid good-bye to sustaining the GDP growth rate of recent years. And you can also say farewell to the fund of good will India enjoys in the international community, including in many Muslim countries. The liberal hope now is that India will reject Hindu bigotry and Muslim fanaticism alike. Both threaten the idea of India which the world now celebrates with such gusto.

Offstumped: And then of course the greatest disservice to this cathartic moment. Mr. Padgaonkar goes back to the cliched Hindutva bashing and these dubious arguments including linking internal political events to what will the world think. Give it up, focus on the subject at hand.

But political correctness has well and truly run out of steam.

Offstumped Bottomline: A tired old media hand finally sighing and acknowledging that the Intellectual Fraud perpetrated by his tribe for the last many years has finally run out of steam.

Having examined this so called left of centre liberal mindset both in India and in the U.S., Offstumped has come to a very profound conclusion. At the root of this liberal mindset is an intellectual elitism that suffers from 2 very base human traits.

The first is a Know it All Arrogance – the blind and absolute conviction that it knows it all, the common man knows nothing and hence it arrogates to itself the authority to decide on behalf of these lesser knowns and then gouges it under the veneer of responsibility very much like the white man’s burden.

The second is a Inferiority Complex – the inherent need to appear to be globally, universally politically correct to the point where almost every thought and every action is influenced, what will the other elites of the world think, to the Americans Left it is about what will the Western Europeans think, to the Indians it is what the Europeans and Americans think, and so on ……….

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