Monday, July 16, 2007

Dead Boy Walking

I don't like to be incestuous, but then.

This morning I woke up to a front page picture in the Hindu, which showed Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai patting the cheek of a boy. The caption read: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai talks to Rafiq-Ullah, a 14-year-old Pakistani suicide-bomber, at the presidential palace in Kabul before freeing him.

Below the picture was the story, headlined: "Pardoning a young suicide-bomber."

How can you talk to a suicide-bomber? How can you free a suicide-bomber? How can you pardon a suicide-bomber? A suicide-bomber is beyond your reach: he is already in the so-called paradise after having blown himself up along with many others.

No wonder the copy, filed by the French news agency AFP, carefully avoids the expression. It only says, at various places, "the boy who was sent to carry out a suicide attack."

Many newspapers these days hire foreigners to spruce up their design. Time they hired foreigners to write the headlines and captions as well.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't like to be incestuous, but then.

This is your standard beginning whenever you take a dig at your rival. This is the 3rd time I've seen the same line. Once in Cong & Dic(K)issue in Kerala & once when they used the headline in their Literary Review saying An interview with... a Bengali Author...
So, next time you want to make fun of Hindu, at least try a new line to begin with.

Nandhu said...

bg,
nice one! wish i had the courage to do that. felt what was wrong as soon as i saw the hindu this morning, but didnt think much about this. good point. i think somebody really got attracted to the story and went overboard with it.

Anonymous said...

And did they "revert back" to you on this?
LOL!!

Anonymous said...

'one suicide bomber' to get u out of that state of loww!!

sunday spin was touching

Swahilya Shambhavi said...

Interesting observation