JournalismPakistan.com
January 13, 2017
By Chatterbox

I like to think of myself as an easygoing, relaxed, ‘nothing bothers me’ kind of person. But every now and then along comes an incident that gets me frothing at the mouth and literally ready to clobber whoever is in my path… all I need at such times is a Neanderthal’s club, a knight’s mace or maybe just a good old fashioned baseball bat.

Just in case you’re wondering what I’m on about, let me enlighten you... I’m talking about the National Press Club elections. Yes, the very same that were recently held in the capital.

Now just to make it amply clear, I’m not against the Press Club, I’m not against the elections and I’m not against those that stood for office. I’m not against the process and I’m not against any specific individual.

Indeed, such a process needs to be exercised on a regular basis, should be totally transparent and contested by honest, responsible, and capable candidates.

This might just be the case of the National Press Club elections and I’m not going to go on about ‘the same old faces’, ‘same old ideas’ and ‘same results’ of elections past. This little commentary is not about any of those.

What it is about is the disgraceful and shameless behavior of some individuals on the day of the elections, the cringe-inducing tamashas they indulged in, and also the over-the-top cheap coverage of the elections in the social media, specifically Facebook, before and after the exercise.

I could hardly stop myself from throwing up when Geo’s Hamid Mir walked in surrounded by a group of cronies fawning and tripping over themselves just to be seen at his side. Disgusting!

They tried to get his attention by literally pulling and wrenching at his arms and clothes, jumped out in front of him to try and get a selfie, bowing and scraping… any and everything short of kissing his hands. It was the most despicable display of fawning and idolizing I have seen in a long time.

For the sake of the Almighty, Mir is just a man. Just another journalist!

I’m amazed that all those chamchas and toadies can walk upright; I’d have imagined they would have had chronic hernias by now with all the T-C-ing they do.

Okay Mir is a good journalist… even if he does not know who Walter Cronkite is. Still, he does possess the ability to pull out a burning issue, a good story, a controversy every now and then. I have nothing against the man.

Now, the other issue. The horrible posters before and after the elections on Facebook. It makes the candidates look like a bunch of criminals. Posters of ‘Most Wanted’ convicts or a cheap Punjabi film …aj hi vaikho. Who are the idiots who come up with such ideas? Is there nobody to counter such absurd exhibitionism? Is nobody who can stand up and say, “No. This is a cheap idea. Let’s not do it.”

Surely there are better ways to introduce or felicitate and congratulate the winners. It looks like the architect of this poster campaign on Facebook must have terrible hankerings of being a Thenadar, was a Thenadar or possibly the victim of a Thanedar.

What horrible posters.

What a bad idea!