Monstering

Sukumar Ranganathan — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:06:00 GMT

Posted under News, Cult Fiction

What India and Indians need now is a healthy does of Monstering.
Pity the country doesn't have its Spider Jerusalem to do this.

Spider, for those who came in late, is the Gonzo journalist hero (created by Warren Ellis) of a dysfunctional and dystopian future America who dares to take on the president of the country.
He does so through his column called I hate it here for a paper called The Word. His writings are defamatory and scatological but they do make a point.
I was reminded of a style of journalism Spider calls Monstering when I saw the kind of response Mint's interview with Barkha Dutt evoked.
Dutt, for those who came in late, is a senior journalist at NDTV 24X7 and she has sort of become a sort of symbol for all that's wrong with India's television channels and the way they covered the terror attacks in Mumbai.
I thought the interview was mild (but we decided to carry it anyway since it would be of interest -- and judging from the response, it was). Maybe we should have Monstered her.
Still, I'm not sure mainstream print media is suited to Monstering (and vice versa) -- at least not in the news pages.
Monstering works better on television as two proponents of the interview-form, Tim Sebastian and Karan Thapar have shown.
It also probably works in the online medium, especially blogs.
But I'm not so sure that you can do what Spider does in the real world and be immune from anti-defamation lawsuits.
The closest the Indian blogosphere has to Spider -- in terms of rant-quotient, let me clarify, not writing style -- is K. In one of his recent posts he used a part of the female anatomy to describe India's national security advisor.
K used to work with me and I met his father, a well-known editor at a recent party. It was the first time I was meeting him. He said he had warned K to be careful about what he blogged about. Clearly, K hasn't followed that advice.
Still, it does make for interesting reading and while it isn't exactly Monstering, it's marginally Spiderish.
And that's high praise, believe me.

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Monstering