Hillary Clinton – Beaten by the Media or by her friends??

Well , now that Hillary Clinton has finally given, one wonders what went wrong. That she was not accessible was well known fact. The liability of an aging Bill and his shadow on Hillary was also expected. Means it did not change since the last 16 months. She won all the key democratic states. She won all the swing voters states which the democrates need to beat a republic man. Whereas most of Obama wins are in republican states. He will really need to work on to get the backing of the key states he did not win. He was protrayed as elite more than Hillary. So why did Hillary loose?  Some say it is gender and some say it is all the mistakes she made.  The first one I would dismiss right away. The next one…her mistakes can easily been explained as just one in a many statements she made each day. These can be easily excused. 

Clue to this mystery is that Hillary almost always did better than what the polls said. She always defied the odds when she won. The main reason was that her support was more outside the media world. The world not accessible to the media or not interested in the media. Well this came up many times during the campaign there was an unfair treatment . Obama always was the media´s darling.  It appears to be a mutual love affair.

The other reason was that entire democratic establishment was against her. No idea why.Kennedy, Kerry and host of others more or less threw their weight behind her. I still remember when in one of the debates Hillary looked up at John Edwards while attacking Obama expecting his support. But then John Edwards came up attacking her along with Obama.

Even though I think that it is a gross failure of someone aspiring to be a president in not being able to maintain and control his or her own establishment, I feel the establishment itself was biased against her and never gave her a chance from day one. Well let us see what she does in the coming days.

 

Will ad revenue help BBC ?

Today I just noticed that something was different from BBC News website. It did not strike me immediately. Just something different. After a few minutes I realised that now the new  website had some advertisements. I was told that it has been already there for quite somedays. How could I have missed it because I read BBC News atleast 3 to 4 times a day? The explanation I could find was that all the adevretisements were similar as in other new sites which I read like Washington Post, New Your Times, USA Today, FT etc.  But then I made me think. If I don´t realise the presence of an advertisement, the whole purpose of the adevrtisement has gone waste. How will I notice a new adevrtisement. Going deeper into it , I realise  that never remembered any advertisement in any of the websites that I visted today.What I also realised I remembered many of the  advertisements  in the magazines which I subscribe and also the TV. Now if I who spends most of the my “eyes open” time on the internet could not be held by an advertisment, how is it that companies are shifting their major marketing budgets into internet. Is it clear that these adevrtisement expenditure are paying back to the firms which are spending? If not , I guess we have “web2.0 bust” probably more severe than the “dotcom bust”.  

Now coming back to BBC, I presume that these advertisements are a means for BBC to recover their fund shortfall which was in the news recently. If that is the case, I guess it is not going to be a long term solutions. BBC has been my favourite TV channel providing my family complete dose of news, entertainment, movies, serials, drama, documentary and everything. All for free. And then for reading the BBC site primarily the news site has been my major source of unbiased reports (notwithstanding the Hutton report and Andrew Gilligan issues…I still consider that Andrew was right and became a victim of the “spin doctors”  and “crisis handling ” of Tony Blair). I do hope that BBC can make up this funding somehow. Even if this means switching from freeview to payed channel i would take it.

Rememberance Day & Delhi- A City of Tombs?

Reading the article of Niall Ferguson in the FT site http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/240d56f2-8f31-11dc-87ee-0000779fd2ac.html , I remembered the comment of a friend of mine when I was touring him around New Delhi. As we were passing from Raj Ghat (where Mahatma Gandhi “Father of the Nation” is buried), Shantivan (where J.Nehru is buried) and then on various leaders (Lal Bahadur Sashtri,Indira Gandhi, Jagjivan Ram, Charan Singh/Devi Lal, Rajiv Gandhi, Giani Zail Singh…) are buried (Vijay Ghat, Sakthi Sthal,Samta Sthal, Kisan Ghat, Veer Bhumi, Ekta Sthal…). Add to this the various kings and Emperors who ruled  India at various stages. After a long day tour, my friend (he was a German) quipped ” Can we go to a place where people live and are not dead”. He was noticed that all these sites were well maintained with a complete cleaning staff maintaining it right up from the early morning courtesy the tax payers money and public trusts. While people actually lived were so dirty even in places where evidently tax collection was much higher and no sign of it being spent. 

Well, Mr.Ferguson´s observations on remembrance day and having a day nominated for some purpose or person are very much apt for having a memorial constructed in lavish style for every famous politician.  What used to be a thanks to immense contribution of an individual to an entire nation so wholesome that you can say that history of the nation would have been different and in all probability would have been a lot worse than now,  but for this person,  has now been turned to a political show.  I am not belittling the contribution of other politicians. But I sincerely feel the contribution of Gandhi and Nehru are far more reaching and time independent that we cannot treat them in the same platform as the other politicians. If every leading politician is awarded a ghat or sthal on his death. we might run into a space constraint for any more ”great politicians”!!