Skip to main content

Its All News to Me!

I recently finished reading BBC journalist Jeremy Vine's book 'It's All News to Me'. It has very useful insights on news, journalism and life in general. And filled with lots of jokes. Like this famous interview between presidential candidate George W Bush and a journalist (Hiller), which shows that the art of journalism is asking the obvious :
Hiller: Can you name the president of Chechnya?
Bush: No, can you?
Hiller: Can you name the president of Taiwan?
Bush: Yeah, Lee.
Hiller: Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan?
Bush: Wait, wait, is this fifty questions?
Hiller: No, it’s four questions of four leaders in four hot-spots.
Bush: The new Pakistani general, he’s just been elected – not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that’s good news for the subcontinent.
Hiller: Can you name him?
Bush: General. I can name the general. Just general.
Hiller: And the prime minister of India?
Bush: The new prime minister of India is . . . no. (Attempts to take the initiative.) Can you name the foreign minister of Mexico?
Hiller: No sir, but I would say to that, I’m not running for president.

(Source : It's All News to Me )
The book is a good general read. Though it could have been less self focused - and it has one or two profanities. Otherwise it's great laughs all the way.

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Humility of Newton

Thou hast honoured me. Thou hast given me a tongue and a pen, many friends; (Thou] hast made me extensively known among thy people and I have reason to hope, useful to many by my preaching and writings... It is of thine own that I can serve thee. And if others speak well of me, I have no cause to speak or think well of myself. They see only my outward walk; to thee I appear as I am. In thy sight I am a poor, unworthy, unfaithful inconsistent creature. And I may well wonder that Thou hast not long ago taken thy word utterly out of my mouth and forbidden me to make mention of thy Name any more! JOHN NEWTON ( Source : Wise Counsel) Newton wrote these words addressed to God in his diary in 1789. In that year, Newton’s fame had grown significantly because of his publishing ‘ Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade’ and his appearance before Her Majesty’s Privy Council appointed to investigate the slave trade.  I find Newton’s words quite challenging. The words reveal a heart truly shaped by t
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Incarnation and Modernity

[The Bible] resituate modernity's prejudices within a wider context from which they were originally wrenched, showing them to be reductive heresies of a more complex biblical reality. So whereas modernity privileges an unchanging a-historicity, in the incarnation God enters history at a particular moment to gather a people to be with him not in a Greck eternity of unchanging timelessness, but in a biblical eternity of never-ending and ever-renewed intimacy and relational richness. Whereas modernity subordinates the particular to the universal, the Bible perfectly marries the universal "image of the invisible God" together with a particular first-century Palestinian Jewish man. Whereas modernity seeks the abstract over the material and finds itself painfully akimbo between the twin idols of materialism and immaterialism, in the same gesture the incarnate Christ validates material reality and prevents his followers from ever worshipping it. Finally, whereas modernity secks
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →