Opinion Telescope: Are you serious? Rahul Gandhi isn’t, says Times Now, because he went to the movies

In another super-duper explosive Times Now exclusive which blew your mind and if it didn’t, you must have been sleeping on the job — tut tut — they disclosed the top secret information shared by people who were not asleep on the job at a Lutyens Delhi cinema hall (name withheld for security reasons), that at 7 pm on Tuesday, the president of the Congress party was lolling in “posh” yes “posh sofa seats” in “J row” — “chilling out with his friends” watching Star Wars, “his favourite movie” — after buying popcorn. Well, in winter, you do “chill out”, and the purpose of popcorn machines in cinema halls is for cine-goers to buy popcorn, right? But we digress.

The hard fact, “arguably” the most significant of 2017, is that Rahul Gandhi preferred the soft cinema seat to a seat before the TV screen, waiting for vote counting to end, unlike the good reporters and desk people at Times Now who were (sleeping) on the job till at least midnight, Monday night — or so said Kumar.

While Rahul G was winding up his starry, starry night, out in “outer orbit” as Kumar put it, the PM, flew out on his way to cyclone-hit Ockhi and met party workers at 1 am in Karnataka, or so Times Now informed us.

What “moral” right did RG have to watch a film, that too, Star Wars? Was it, perhaps, to learn from The Resistance a thing or two about defeating the First Order? Or is this an interest Modi and Rahul share? Remember, the PM seemed quite taken by the Jedi: In September 2014, if you were sufficiently wide awake, you may have heard him tell 60,000 people in Central Park, New York, “May the force be with you”? The sad fact is that for seven thousand, two hundred seconds, Times Now discussed Rahul Gandhi watching a nine thousand, one hundred and eighty second film. “Are you serious?’ Or as Sumanth C. Raman commented on The Newshour, “What kind of journalism is this?” The Times Now kind of what they call journalism. They need an alarm wake-up call, seriously, if they want to be taken seriously

The purpose of the compare and contrast between the PM and the Congress president was to portray the former as a full-time dedicated leader and the latter as a “part time” politician who likes the movies. Woe unto him if he celebrates December 25.

Five years ago in 2012, after Narendra Modi won a famous victory in the Gujarat assembly elections, he became the darling of TV news channels. Overnight, each time he opened his mouth to speak, the news channels broadcast his every word. This has continued through the 2014 Lok Sabha elections into the present. Now, several channels act like his cheerleaders and echo chamber. They lend their support and ammunition to the PM by attacking the Opposition and Rahul Gandhi — hence the “blockbuster” debate on Rahul’s J row cinema hall seat.

After Gujarat, where Rahul appears to have held his own, despite all that news channels like Zee News, Times Now and Republic, to name a few, threw at him, perhaps they should ask themselves if this strategy is helping Modi’s cause? You know what they say about the worm, it has a habit of turning. Just like viewers, who have begun to turn off the TV set or be turned off by the “tamasha” as CNN News 18 anchor Bhupendra Chaubey called it, on news debates.

Meanwhile, Sudarshan TV has set out on a “Hindustan ko bachao yatra” which promotes, “hum do, hamare do, sabko do” and plenty of unwarranted, unpalatable comments on Muslims and Kashmiris. Is it possible the Ministry of I& B banned condom advertising between 10 pm and 6 am to encourage more procreation? And maybe the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare will be worried about population control?

Now I’m off to the movies. If that’s okay with Times Now?