Is the fault with the politicians, or the journalists?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2011/03/03 07:01 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2011/03/03/10134774.aspx


Sometimes you can't tell when you read a story about something politicians are doing whether

Now when it comes to medical or science or technology news, one can blame the problem on the experts over-simplifying to make allowances for the journalists screwing things up, and the journalists proving that not enough allowances were made.

But for politics of any kind, it is pretty hard to say who is at fault.

Take the story ‘Give Marathi classical language tag’, for example:

Shiv Sena on Sunday asked the Centre to give Marathi the classical language status just the way it did to Tamil in 2004. Speaking on the occasion of ‘Marathi Bhasha Divas’ at Ravindra Natya Mandir, Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray said that he would take his demand to the President and the Prime Minister.

“When APJ Abdul Kalam was the president, the government awarded Tamil the status of classical language. Marathi is rich in its linguistic and its literary values, just like any other language in the world. Along with a delegation of party leaders and MPs I will meet the President and the Prime Minister for our demand,” said Thackeray.

Thackeray also announced that Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will construct a Marathi Bhavan in Mumbai.

The Sena leader launched a book called Asmita that explains the use of Marathi in various sectors and a compilation of articles on the language by eminent personalities.

So is this a case where the politicians are really so unable to understand that being recognized as a classical language may well be described as being "awarded classicial language status" but it is actually a matter of providing proof from language experts of the ancient nature of the lnguage, not going to the President and the Prime Minister and making demands?

Or did the journalist covering the story fail to understand the nuance and took rhetoric as a plan to state demands?

I'd say the claims are as silly as someone's father going to Harvard and demanding of the dean of admissions that their son be admitted since one of their son's friends was. Even though no application has been sent in.

And maybe (to torture my own analogy) that works for really rich, legacy dads and the like (I once dated someone whose grandfather was responsible for up to 10% of NYU's admissions, so I know it happens) but mostly you just go through the process and if you have the proof you'll get the status.

Politics will of course enter into it, but it isn't just something one can go make random demands....

So who got this one wrong?


Pavanaja U B on 3 Mar 2011 5:39 PM:

First one is right: Some of our politicians are not just dumb they are stupid idiots. In fact some of the politicians are more dangerous than the terrorists.

-Pavanaja


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