Love, actually

The magazine said that after months of US 8216;8216;prodding8217;8217;, Musharraf has clamped down on 8216;8216;some of the country8217;s 13,000 registered madrasahs8230; which are al Qaeda8217;s richest recruiting ground in Pakistan8217;8217;. It quoted Musharraf8217;s aides on Musharraf. They said his 8216;8216;tougher tack on homegrown extremists is, if anything, a sign of his own convictions, not a response to Washington.8217;8217;

Musharraf to Time: 8216;8216;We have to root out terrorism. And I8217;m prepared to make any sacrifice for Pakistan to do this.8217;8217; Time to readers: 8216;8216;Brave words from a man who knows he is gambling with his life8217;8217;.

Brand Uma

Uma Bharti does cut an eye-catching figure, especially from afar. The marching sanyasin is leading the western media on to provocative questions. Is she all the BJP has to offer, asked Newsweek in the week when reports at home suggested the BJP8217;s Maharashtra unit may be toying with a similar disillusion. Last week, the Economist drew attention to Bharati to paint a picture of an 8216;8216;opposition in search of a cause8217;8217;.

Newsweek saw a 8216;8216;leadership crisis8217;8217; in the BJP that has now 8216;8216;rejuvenated the radicals8217;8217;. Once, there was Vajpayee. Now 8216;8216;rather than retiring, he seems to be caving in to the BJP8217;s extremist wing8217;8217;. For the magazine, the larger question is whether Muslim-baiting is still a winning strategy in an India straining to enjoy the benefits of economic growth and where coalitions have become a necessity.

Stand up and vote

In the countdown to November in the US, no group of voters is too small, too inconsequential, too shadowy, too faraway. In an election billed as the biggest in everybody8217;s lifetime, the two campaigns and the media are obssessing about smaller and smaller wedges of the electorate.

In recent days, the media have probed the politics of fashionistas, wondered whether it is okay to allow those who suffer from advanced dementia to vote for the leader of the free world, sought out far flung American expats to assess their political tendencies.

8216;8216;The emphasis of couture is on iconoclasm and originality, which would be at odds with any conservative agenda. And yet, at the same time, it can be read as the most capitalistic cultural form8230;8217;8217; agonised columnist Zoe Williams in the Guardian. The Washington Post raised the question of whether people with Alzheimer8217;s disease are able to 8216;8216;understand8217;8217; the issues in an election but whether disqualifying them would equal discrimination and, after all, who is the 8216;8216;competent8217;8217; voter anyway.

Our Shylocks

And how do we construct the Other, the villain, the foreigner, in our minds? How intimate must we allow ourselves to get with him and yet retain the distance appropriate for showing him our scorn, or amusement?

Those questions may sound misplaced in times when the 8216;other8217; is always a bloodless stereotype. But in the New York Times, Stephen Greenblatt, professor of the humanities at Harvard university, delicately probed the degrees of intimacy between 8216;us8217; and 8216;them8217; as he unravelled the making of one of the most complex villains of any time: Shakespeare8217;s Shylock.

The professor marvelled at how Shakespeare, a man of provincial origins and modest education, could arrive at the 8216;8216;strange, irrepressible imaginative generosity8217;8217; that went into the making of Shylock. In the 8216;Merchant of Venice8217;, he said, imaginative generosity provides 8216;8216;too much insight into Shylock8217;s inner life, too much of a stake in his identity and fate, to enable audiences to laugh freely and without pain.8217;8217; For the professor, Shylock embodies the moment of Shakespeare8217;s aesthetic breakthrough, bringing the audience too close to the villain for comfort.