News Today hits out at vernacular media and PMK

In this hard-hitting article, News Today criticizes the way in which the Tamil newspapers and the PMK have (mis)behaved in the recent developments in Chennai:

You know something somewhere is impossibly wrong when the media talks a lot about culture and morality. Private things are not for public consumption. But actually these are the two words that are frequently used on the two matters that have been hogging disproportionately high media space over the last few days. L'affaire Kushboo and the breast-beating over a party in a star hotel in the city.

The hotel is said to have circumvented a rule (of seeking permission for a fashion show) and that is why two of its staff members have been arrested. Period. There is nothing more to the story. period. But the kind of opinions expressed, especially in the vernacular media, makes one blanch.

The opinions expressed by political parties, especially by the self-appointed moral police in the State PMK, make one feel sick in the stomach. The PMK, which has a vested interest in keeping the Kushboo issue alive, yesterday demanded that she be sent out of the State as because she has married thrice. Now, has she? Who is to tell that that public discourse cannot be carried based on what appears in gossip columns of film rags?

The issue here is not whether Kushboo has married thrice or not. The numbers on her marital pages and the affairs, if at all she wants to have, is not ours to judge. If monogamy and celibacy are to be the criterion for staying in this State, how many will we have to ship out? A few hundred Titanics would be needed, and this is a conservative estimate. Politicians being politicians will always be specious in their reasoning and economical with truth. So to ignore the PMK kind of politics is the right way. Strangely, the issues that PMK espouses may find a positive echo among certain sections of the society. But if you listen carefully, those will be hollow and hypocritical.

But why is the media too jumping into the moral police bandwagon? It will always be tempting to dole out ideas and suggestions to others. It is a human failing. But taking the seeming moral highground, though it may be tempting, is fraught with huge risks. For if anyone falls from that position, the impact is bound to be heavy and that much more severe. Media's job is to just report, hold a mirror to the society at large. In other words, provide sub-titles to the life of picture running in the society.

But if it starts interpreting the texts and adding its own ideas, the plot goes haywire. The script becomes clumsy, and the climax unpredictable. Some sections of the media have published the photograph of a woman gulping down a large bottle of some spirited water and ridiculed the whole culture.

To be sure, there is nothing edifying in such types of act, but what is it ridiculing? Drinking? Or a lady drinking? Actually, it is the latter. Without them realising the papers have given the feminists a chance to climb the high horse and start shouting themselves hoarse about the inequity in the system. Moral high ground vs feminist high horse, now this is quite a fight. Feminism, morals, culture...thanks a lot for the unholy mess that the political parties and the media have got us into.

On top of all this, today's Tamizh Murasu says that Khushboo attempted to commit suicide. This is the last thing Khushboo would like to read on her birthday (Sep 29).