Thursday, March 29, 2007

Shashi Tharoor ...


Cricketers retire, coaches get murdered, actors fade away, politicians get assassinated, the better writers get fatwaed... but fools, they endure. Nothing ever affects them.

These sharp words are from Angry Fix, prompted by this execrable ToI column by Shashi Tharoor about "[saving] the sari from a sorry fate". Emma has an appropriate response [Via Uma] covering multiple levels of badness in Tharoor's piece. [Example: At one point, he casually -- oh so casually -- slides in this stuff about "... the increasing dominance of our culture by Punjabi-ised folk who think nothing of giving masculine names to their daughters."]

Tharoor's 'diplomatic' skills were on display just last week in this NYTimes column with all its gratuitous insults hurled at those uncouth Americans who cannot appreciate cricket's superiority over baseball [is he still angry with them for thwarting his 'election' to the top UN job]. Siddhartha has a great response to that 'bilious sortie by Tharoor'.

3 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    See Ramachndra Guhas take on the Saree-Salwar debate:

    http://www.hinduonnet.com/mag/2004/10/24/stories/2004102400380300.htm

  2. Anonymous said...

    Pradeep, thank you for sharing Ramchandra guha's piece on the sari/churidhar debate.
    i have caught on to this a bit late in the day -
    nevertheless, Guha's piece is so much more well articulated that Shashi Tharoor's.

    anu

  3. Anonymous said...

    My response to Shashi:
    http://pujathakur.wordpress.com/2007/04/27/reply-to-shashi-tharoor-by-gurdas-singh-sandhu/