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Bhutto and the lure of easy solutions

Started by mathewi · 1 year ago

This isn’t a political blog, so I’m not going to go into a huge amount of detail on the completely unsurprising (but still saddening) assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. But I will note that I found out about it first from Twitter — ... Continue reading »

7 comments

  • rhyndman

    1 year ago

    Hitchens also has an excellent piece: http://snurl.com/1vw8q
    reply
  • Karoli

    1 year ago

    Agree, the Hitchens article is excellent.
    reply
  • Karoli

    1 year ago

    In the article you linked, there is this sentence, which is the heart of the differences of opinion surrounding Bhutto's leadership in Pakistan:

    "...ever more radicalized generation of young Muslim men Miss Bhutto was entirely unacceptable as the leader of their nation..."

    I see it in the Twitter feeds as well. To drop corruption accusations while unseating a government elected by the people is laughable. This is all about gender, and offended sensibilities at being led by a woman. It is about someone who would not and could not travel in the circles of men who wished to retain and consolidate power.

    Gender was her handicap.

    I am NOT saying that this assassination was because she was a woman at all. What I am saying is that much of what you read about her ability to lead in Pakistan and the allegations of corruption had much to do with her gender and offended sensibilities.
    reply
  • Richard Budman

    1 year ago

    Yes Mathew, it probably does say something that news of the Bhutto assassination first broke to you on twitter (I would have figured your all wired up to the Globe's newsroom... wouldn't they get a fast breaking story like this first?) But respectively, I think I am more enlightened when the news breaking on these new media sources like twitter and your blog are the stories that CNN or CBC isn't also breaking into 5 minutes later and covering for the rest of the day like the Bhutto story. The stuff we ordinarily wouldn't be hearing about from "old" media.
    reply
  • mathewi

    1 year ago

    I agree, Richard -- and the only reason I didn't pick it up earlier
    from the Globe's newswires is that I wasn't in the newsroom :-)
    Technically, I'm still on vacation.
    reply
  • rhyndman

    1 year ago

    I just realized that John Dickerson, Slate's exceptional political correspondent, is twittering as he follows the candidates on the road. It's another fascinating application, and had never occurred to me.
    reply
  • mathewi

    1 year ago

    That's cool.
    reply

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