Media matters

Normally I save my sanity by keeping away from all the garbage on TV and reports about the antics of media stars, sports celebrities and the like. But this time it is too much. I have never watched reality TV and I can only imagine how ghastly it must be. I understand that one of the important aspects of atleast the Big Brother show is that the participants are expected to be gratuitously obnoxious and rude to each other. So I don't understand what the fuss is all about. As Germaine Greer said some where, no one objected to our own pretty little Miss Shilpa Shetty being refered to as a 'dog' but the ****, so to speak, hit the fan when good old Jade Goody made remarks about her being an Indian. It is okay to make sexist remarks, but not okay to make racist remarks? All the coverage in our own media is at the horror that something like this could happen to one of us. One of our own pretty faces (don't get me wrong; I have nothing against pretty faces, being one myself) who was to receive a payment of, no kidding, 350,000 pounds for her appearance had to endure this humilation. Someone educated in our best schools, best colleges, with a background in acting, talent, karate, public speaking and what not, had to endure insults from a mere former dental nurse...what cheek?! But I guess all this has been said before. But I want to turn to something else, which no doubt others on the blogosphere also have: what about the biases, innate colour consciousness, status consciousness, class consciousness of our media. What is the last time we heard about l'il Shilpa and the ogre Jade from a Karupaiian, or a Manonmani or a Tamil-Arasi? Why is it that the anchors are aways the Nehas and the Nidhis, etc.? Why only wheatish TV anchors? I also want to turn to the issue of the humiliation of the millions of Indians everyday who one simply has to look out of the window and see...how about the humilation of those standing in lines for water, those rushing for bushes and getting crushed under the tyres, how about those getting laid off with a day's notice, those that go to bed hungry (bed, what bed? on the pavement on the streets of our great metropolises is more like it)? How about their humilation at the hands of not the Jane Goody's but at the hands of other Desis? But I digress...One of the points of this post is to try to break the bloggers break, but I not getting very far...let us see what happens...