The wrong way to defend an alleged kleptocrat
Pakistan’s Daily Times, usually given to publishing sober editorials (if we ignore the conspiracy theory mongering), comes out with all guns firing—at Jemima Khan, Imran’s ex-wife. Her offence? Writing an op-ed that was very critical of Benazir Bhutto.
But what is Daily Times’ argument?
Jemima Khan has given vent to her spleen in a diatribe against BB in the Daily Telegraph of London. Ms Khan calls Ms Bhutto a “kleptocrat”, which is all very well except that it comes from a woman who is an heir and beneficiary of her father Sir James Goldsmith, one of the twentieth century’s most notorious corporate raiders. [DT]
You would expect a good newspaper editor to know the immense moral difference between a kleptocrat—a person who steals money from the very people who elect her—and a corporate raider’s offspring—who doesn’t steal money from anyone.
And it’s downhill from there. Unable to defend Benazir from the charges leveled against her, all the Daily Times can manage is to, well, vent its spleen in a diatribe against Jemima Khan. So she’s a “habitually partying, card-carrying member of the decrepit global flitterati”. She also has a point. Or is the newspaper taking a page out of the Pakistani government’s book—that criticism of Pakistani affairs is only for the perfect?
So, it is not only the Indian mainstream media that has a copyright on levity and frivolity. Would you label it as ‘shifting the context of the debate’ or this intellectualisation gives the venomous diatribe a cloak of respectability?
BTW, the Jemima Khan piece was well written. She could obviously afford a good ghostwriter. May I suggest something – the DT could have contacted one Mr. Nitin Pai to demolish her arguments instead 😉
Whats new in this? Infact this has become the standard line of defense in most cases. Even the intellectual PM recently countered BJP this way.
hey, at least they didn’t go after her jewish antecedents.
Anuj,
They didn’t. But they did rebuke her for dropping her husband, her adopted country and religion after she got bored with them all.
I don’t condone her being personally attacked for voicing her opinion, but Jemima must have known that events concerning her personal life in recent years would be alluded to now she has decided to break her silence on Pakistani affairs. That is the price she pays for being so well-connected that she is able to get her and Imran’s write-ups on Bhutto printed in a respected English newspaper.