Whoever Wrote This Editorial For The News Clearly Smoked Some Excellent Garda* Prior To Writing It
Tell me I'm wrong. Just look at the way it starts:
*Garda=a type of hashish (from what I hear)
The original definition of the word ‘drone’ was … ‘A male bee, especially a honeybee, that is characteristically stingless, performs no work, and produces no honey. Its only function is to mate with the queen bee.’ The drones that potter about in our skies these days are hardly stingless, they seem to work hard and the ‘honey’ they produce is the body-count at the end of their missions. Hitherto they have been invaders of our sovereignty, violators of our airspace and all-round naughty drones much in need of having their bottoms spanked by the Pakistan Air Force. Except that these naughty drones, far from creeping covertly over our borders to do their dirty work, set off from hives within our homeland as revealed courtesy of the poor-mans spook Google Earth last week. Nobody’s sovereignty is being invaded as the little devils are here with our by-your-leave, our guests, even.
*Garda=a type of hashish (from what I hear)
Labels:
Pakistan
14 comments:
ha ha ...Brilliant :)
In times like these - a laugh is more than welcome.
Excellent post.
"... all-round naughty drones much in need of having their bottoms spanked by the Pakistan Air Force."
Seriously, were eds at The News sleeping?
Naah, I think the ed at The News was cheering this chap on. What a guy! Haha!!
This just substantiates the fact that journalism has dropped down to a very low standard and not just Pakistan, I've seen quite a few shockers lately.
"Naughty drones," as opposed to the pristine and well-behaved drones. Oh behave!
"Nobody’s sovereignty is being invaded as the little devils are here with our by-your-leave, our guests, even."
-what a shitty sentence!
I'm recently came across this blog and have been very impressed with the quality of writing, diversity of posts, and general high standard of discussion.
I was amused to read your inference about the editorial page writer at The News smoking some sort of substance. Although I have no way of knowing for sure, it's quite likely that the editorial was written by Omar R. Quraishi, a former editor at Dawn, A-level economics teacher, and alumni of the university that the writer of this blog post is currently attending.
He used to write at Dawn for a couple of years and still writes under his name for The News on Sunday. Since editorials represent the entire newspaper, there is no way of knowing for sure, but Mr. Quraishi does have a rather unique, and often caustic (usually in a good way), writing style.
Just my two cents.
Hamza: It is far more likely this post was written by Tito, the editor of The News. He has a very strange sense of humour that fits the editorial.
I'm sure Ahsan will correct me if I'm wrong but I think he's studying at the University of Chicago. If you meet Omar, he will tell you (multiple times) that he was at Columbia.
OQ was also a grad student at U of C. In fact, irony of ironies, I think he may have actually been enrolled in the Poli Sci dept before leaving. For some reason, the department still has a listing under his name:
http://political-science.uchicago.edu/gradstudents.shtml#Q
Or it could just be another Omar Qureshi. But I do recall him saying something to us at KGS about being at U of C.
Ahsan: It's been a couple of years since I was in school and took A-level econ with him, but I think OQ did his undergrad from Columbia and his graduate degree (possibly Journalism or Anthropology) at U of C. I tried to find a profile for him online, but wasn't successful. Speaking of him, a couple of years ago, OQ was quite active in the blogging world, particularly in this fascinating discussion about the roles of the print media vs blogs.
http://www.kidvai.com/windmills/2007/05/battle-within-battle.html
I don't think he's the same Omar Qureshi linked at the UChicago political science page, OQ spelled his last name "Quraishi" while the gentleman on the UChicago page spelled it "Qureshi".
Still, coming back to the topic of the original post, I've always wondered who writes The News editorials. Compared to the blandish nature of Dawn editorials, or even those of the Daily Times, The News always seems rather out there.
I don't know very much about the art of writing an editorial, but The News editorial writer always gives the impression that he/she is using the page to vent their anger, using the most colorful imagery, at the wrongs in our society, instead of writing a reasoned critique of the issue.
WOW. WOW. WOW. I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.
Sorry for the caps. But...THAT. WAS. FUCKING. AWESOME.
Thank you Hamza for sharing that. Made my day/week. Greatest link ever.
If readers from KHI are here reading these comments, and familiar with either (a) the worlds of Dawn/The News or (b) KGS, then please follow Hamza's link and read the ENTIRE post and ALL the comments. Please.
AHSAN IS A GRAMMARIAN?
:( :( :( :(
Haha yes, my deepest apologies.
Well.. it's okay. I still love you.
But it hurts :(
wow -- a whole blog entry devoted to me -- the editorial in question was not written by me or by talat -- it was written by someone who arguably is one of the best editorial writers in the country -- and he was writing it with a sarcastic tone -- also i was enrolled at u of c for a year in 1995-96 in the dept of south asian languages and civilizations -- that omar qureshi was someone else
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