Breaking Down News: Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close

May 4 is Star Wars’ official, global fandom day, though no episode ever released on that day.

Stoically weathering the Salman Khan brouhaha and shrugging off the four tweets emitted by the newborn handle @OfficeofRG Twitter, which has become the glue holding the universe of Star Wars fandom together with hashtags such as #StarWarsDay, #MayThe4thBeWithYou, personalised May 4 this year. If you used those hashtags on Tuesday, your tweet went out with a tiny stromtrooper’s image. #MayTheFourthBeWithYou called up a mugshot of the insufferably suffering Limey droid C-3PO.

May 4 is Star Wars’ official, global fandom day, though no episode ever released on that day. Rather, Maggie Thatcher installed her toothbrush at 10 Downing Street on May 4, 1979, beginning a whole era of reverse sexist jokes at the expense of Denis Thatcher. While she displayed exemplary decorum, quoting from St Francis of Assisi’s prayer, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace, the Tories marked the occasion with a half-page ad in the Evening News which crowed, “May the Fourth be With You, Maggie, Congratulations!” And thus, around a random date and a lispy pun coalesced the centripetal Force of Star Wars fandom, creating its global national day, so to speak.

There was a perceptual gulf between the print and TV versions of the latest twist on the Prophet cartoons issue. The newspaper coverage was grimly thoughtful everywhere, while AP’s dramatic video outside the venue of the cartoon contest in the Dallas suburb of Garland was accompanied by an oh-dear-is-nothing-sacred sort of audio feed from inside the building. They had anticipated trouble because artwork about the Prophet Muhammad was involved and a Dutch minister was attending. This was Dallas, not Amsterdam or Paris, so the attackers were instantly blown away and their car sanitised by a bloodcurdling little robot with some kind of lightsabre springing from its head. It was bright red, same as Darth Vader’s weapon.

Also on Tuesday, Google marked the 151st birth anniversary of feminist investigative reporter Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, who enjoyed a formidable reputation under the pen name of Nellie Bly. A war correspondent and far-ranging travel writer at a time when women in media generally dispensed advice on how to grow herbaceous borders and knit Fair Isle, she was a portent of change — the Jazz Age dawned right after her death at the start of the Roaring Twenties.

The BBC, which gleefully covered Nepal’s exasperation with the blundering Indian media also gave us the low-down on a much-shared photograph after the quake which must have broken a million hearts worldwide. The picture shows a tiny boy protectively cradling an even tinier sister against a hostile world. On social media, there have been attempts to raise money for these alleged orphans, and to connect them with their parents.

The photo is actually from a remote village in northern Vietnam and was shot in 2007 by Na Son Nguyen . He saw two Hmong children playing in front of their home while their parents were away working in the fields. The girl was spooked when she saw a stranger armed with an arsenal of lenses, her brother comforted her, and Nguyen took a beautiful picture.

The picture has also been found with captions suggesting that the children are Rohingya orphans or victims of the violence in Syria. “This is perhaps my most shared photo but unfortunately in the wrong context,” Na Son told the BBC.

Meanwhile, the keen blooper watchers at the Independent’s i100 feed ran a story which YouTube headlined “Anchorman F-bomb News Blooper Fail”, in which a Fox 59 anchor mispronounced “food truck” in a manner strengthening the well-know relation between food and sex. As Kurt Vonnegut was wont to say, so it goes.

pratik.kanjilal@expressindia.com

Source:: Indian Express