The only trouble with Chris Matthews, who incidentally is my favorite political commentator, is that he almost always assumes that anybody who does not agree with his point of view is an idiot. This is evident from the difference in the way he interviews liberals and conservatives – to one group, he is genial, even [...]
The trouble with people like Arundhati Roy is that they are capable only of being rabble-rousers. I refer specifically to this opinion piece of hers in the Times of India that I read belatedly berating India for not doing enough about the war in Sri Lanka.
She ends her piece with an impassioned appeal to the [...]
… or did anyone else find the opening line of this PTI news report funny?
The Pilibhit police on Tuesday registered a case against Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Varun Gandhi for his allegedly inflammatory speeches on the directions of the Election Commission.
I haven’t watched Slumdog Millionaire yet; I doubt if I will. Because some friends whose tastes and preferences as regards movies are close to mine are of the opinion that the movie is just another masala flick*, whose “realistic” depiction of the slums, squalor, hope and triumph falls way short of what some Hindi and Tamil [...]
You remember Sagarika Ghose, don’t you? That newscaster who thinks of herself as an authority, especially on matters on which she has no competence whatsoever. She got her comeuppance from Ram Jethmalani this past week.
Ms. Ghose, in attempting to push Mr. Jethmalani into a corner for his decision to defend Manu Sharma in the Jessica [...]
Continue reading about Ram Jethmalani to Sagarika Ghose: “Bullshit!”
While it is great to know that Mr. Anand Giridharadas finds his life’s calling in the country that his parents left to seek a better life, it would have been much better had he not jotted down his experiences with the kind of snobbishness that makes one wonder if second generation Indian Americans still believe that [...]
Today’s Morning Joe on MSNBC had some of the funniest moments on a TV news show since Chris Matthews took conservative radio talk show host Kevin James on the issue of appeasement.
The topic of discussion this morning was the money that former New York Stock Exchange chairman, Richard Grasso had taken home, roughly $190 million. [...]
Suryan FM 93.5 is streaming their Chennai radio programs live online. Just go to their website, register for free and start listening (kELunga, kELunga, kEttukittE irunga!).
I had already written about Aahaa FM which streams live online.
In case you are interested in the URL for the streams:
Aahaa FM — mms://74.54.85.4/AahaaFM or rtsp://74.54.85.4/AahaaFM
Suriyan FM — mms://66.180.172.26/suryanFMchennai or [...]
Some (crazy) activists throw pies at Thomas Friedman as he begins a speech at Brown University. Ridiculous, but not funny.
You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video
Philadelphia Daily News today endorsed Senator Barack Obama for next week’s primaries in Pennsylvania.
In its endorsement, the editorial board states, in no uncertain terms, why the Illinois Senator is better equipped than Hillary Clinton. One of the main reasons behind the paper’s choice seems to be Senator Obama’s reaching out to everyone, irrespective of their [...]
(I have been intending to write about this for quite some time now, but yesterday’s episode proved the catalyst.)
Over the past few weeks, I have become a huge fan of Vijay TV’s Neeya Naana. The talk show pits two groups of people against each other to discuss and argue about inane, inconclusive topics like “Are [...]
A week or so ago, I received the editorial of the Thuglak magazine from a friend as an email forward. In it, the magazine lambasts the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi, for his (mis-)handling of and his attitudes concerning the Sethusamudram project.
Titled “Arrogance, is your name Kalaignar?“, this was a fantastic piece [...]
In the latest episode of “Asathapovadhu Yaaru?” on Sun TV, a few of the participants were seen taking potshots at Vijay TV. Anyone following the show would know that the team working with Sun TV was previously involved with Vijay, which actually brought them to the fore in the first place. So to say, a [...]
Anuradha SenGupta, Features Editor at CNN-IBN, shares her opinion about enduring the ordeal that is Sivaji.
Well, everyone is entitled to voice an opinion. But Ms. SenGupta goes rather overboard in trying to prove that the movie isn’t great. Her post reads as if it were a natural reaction to someone who suggested that the Rajnikanth [...]
Did you read The Hindu dated May 21, 2007? It carried a detailed article on the back page about a certain Ms Vidya Ram who had topped the Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Fair enough. Congrats! But would anyone else aged 27, and from Chennai have made the news? If she weren’t the daughter of [...]
You realise how futile, base and even desperate the print and TV media has become when they consider that Mark Shields* going home for Easter vacation as news worth reporting.
* Mark Shields is the Deputy Commissioner of the Jamaican Police, and Chief Investigator in the Bob Woolmer murder case.
Today, a few colleagues were watching the video of an old advertisement. I remember seeing it on Doordarshan in the last ’80s. The ad was one of the most remarkable ones of those years.
Yes, “Hamara Bajaj” had a universal appeal. It was filled with elements that made the scooter seem like a commodity that everyone [...]
Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita (Ch. 4, V. 8 ):
paritranaya sadhunam
vinasaya ca duskrtam
dharma-samsthapanarthaya
sambhavami yuge yuge
In order to deliver the pious and to annihilate the miscreants, as well as to reestablish the principles of religion, I advent Myself millennium after millennium.
In the glorious traditions of Adi Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhvacharya, Raja Rammohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda [...]
One of most shocking news items that the media has been hyping up this past week has been the Sabarimala episode, where it has lately been “discovered” that a woman entered the sanctum sanctorum, thus causing a loss of divinity in Lord Ayyappa’s most sacred abode. I’m jotting down some observations on this.
1. The Kannada [...]
The World Cup broadcasts come with their own share of advertisements — a small set which gets repeated over and over again. Minus the longer Airtel ad, nothing is worth a mention…
… except for the HDFC Standard Life Insurance advertisement, which should rank as among the most insensitive ever to appear on Indian television. You [...]

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