Bring back the entertainment

One of the gambits politicians employ is responding to a query by answering a question that hasn’t yet been asked.

Seasoned Pakistani politicians who appear in interviews and on TV talk shows have, by and large, acquired the rare talent of making sure that a dialogue ends up being short on substance and long on twee. One of the gambits they employ is responding to a query by answering a question that hasn’t yet been asked. A case in point was the recent television interview of Chaudhry Shujaat Husain conducted by Ayesha Tammy Haq. It reminded me of a discussion I heard on the radio during my student days in London when Malcolm Muggeridge, a former editor of Punch, confessed to a friend how difficult it was to interview PG Wodehouse, who wrote impeccable English and whose main canvas remained that of pre-war English upper class society. “How do you interview a chap who says he has no views on politics or religion?”

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain can certainly speak on both politics and religion with an eye-rolling credulity and a cute innocence. The only problem is very few people can understand what he is saying. Now Ms Haq is jolly good at her work. She does her research and has no compunction for calling a spade a spade. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get very far with the stalwart of the PML-Q, who, after flitting between gauzy cliché and weary exclamation, assiduously avoided answering the sort of awkward question that nicks the nerve.

To start with, most TV watchers who happened to have seen the episode and to whom I spoke had a problem understanding the politician. In between the mumble and the withering squelch, delivered with abysmal seriousness and the disheveled taupe-toothed arrogance of utter self-belief, I had no idea what the Q League was all about or whether the party ever had a manifesto. None of the dots seemed to connect. It was certainly not a ringing endorsement for a life of public service. Tammy Haq did try to do a little probing. But Gamesmanship, even of the local variety, is a formidable weapon, and there is really no effective counter against it.

How different was that interview of Lee Kuan Yew on “Hard Talk”, that hard-hitting flagship programme of the BBC. Tim Sebastian, who won the Bafta award in 1982, had scalped quite a few heads of state, politicians, bankers, businessmen and other undesirable members of the human race. Sebastian had loaded both barrels and was ready to blow Lee off the face of the globe. But a funny thing happened under the glare of the lights. No sooner had Sebastian asked the visitor his first loaded question that Lee employed his own brand of Chinese one-upmanship. “Why is it that when you westerners address us Asians you act as if we are a bunch of dumb idiots?” That did it. Lee had put Sebastian on the back foot. Tim coughed and spluttered a few times and I believe he never quite recovered from the note of disapproval.

There was also this rather caustic interview with Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who Tim Sebastian tried to haul over the coals. The BBC fact-finding team had done its homework. But the amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami stood his ground, refused to kowtow to the interviewer and threw in a few barbs of his own. I was riveted to the TV screen. The point I am trying to make is that television is not about information or knowledge. Television is about entertainment. Good, solid, old-fashioned entertainment. If you want information, read the newspapers. I wish more anchors would remember this. After all, the media in Pakistan has never been as free as it is today.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 19^th,  2011.