Being Outside the News Loop
In Puerto Barrios, northern Guatemala, I wandered into a cyber cafe after many days incommunicado.
As is my routine, I pulled up my e-mail and CNN's "World News" section simultaneously. CNN's top headline and blurb said that Bhutto's son was taking the reins of the Pakistan People's Party following her death. My first reaction was shock. Clearly, Bhutto had been assassinated. I didn't have to read further to know that. For reasons I still don't understand, I felt as though I'd been kicked in the stomach, my body slightly flush, the preamble to dizziness.
I've hardly spent any time in Pakistan, but I've been following developments there for the last few months on CNN and IHT. When I read the headline, it was my emotional reaction which was "shock." It certainly wasn't the fact that she'd been assassinated. That should've surprised no one. In fact, you could make a compelling case for why it was unlikely that she even lasted this long. (She almost got 86'd just hours after she landed in Pakistan the day she returned from exile, for starters.)
In the minutes that followed, as I read the articles about what, exactly, had happened, I started to wonder if it wasn't a positive development. She's now a political martyr in a region particularly interested in martyrs. Green flags flapping in the wind, pilgrimages to her grave site. Bhutto remained popular but was caught up in scandal, partially her own fault, partially because of her husband. She had served the maximum of two terms as prime minister. Now her son, Bilawal, is going to take over the Pakistan People's Party. He's 19 and handsome in trendy frames from Prada or Dolce & Gabbana. He's studying at Oxford, though I'm not sure what that means in practical terms. (Certainly the hallowed halls of such schools have produced their fair share of "Western-educated, moderate, progressive" men who've gone home to become the nastiest of third world despots.) He's got the million dollar sound bite in the articles: "My mother always said democracy was the best revenge."
And of course, "what, exactly, had happened" isn't clear at all. The police prevented the autopsy, the husband prevented the autopsy and said so, the autopsy couldn't have been prevented through normal channels except by a judge's order. Bhutto died because she was shot. Bhutto died of shrapnel from a bomb, even though everyone else in her bombproof car lived. Bhutto died because she ducked back down, through the sunroof, into her car and hit her head on the sunroof latch. The video shows her scarf and hair moving, clearly because of bullets. She had a wound on her head, with bone fragments, indicating X. (Plug in your favorite theory! It's forensics mad libs in the heart of Pakistan!) She was killed in an area of heavy ISI control. She was killed because she had uncovered a plan by the ISI to commit election fraud and was about to turn the information over to US diplomats. Her top security advisor has links to UBL. Oh my.
Reading this in an internet cafe, days after it happened, while the guy at the computer next to me watches porn and shifts uncomfortably in his seat... it makes me feel like I'm missing out on something. What does it matter when I know, how easily I can check multiple news sources? Nothing larger than personal interest, I suppose. At home, my desktop RSS feed would've blared the news within a minute of the CNN or BBC running it. Here, I'm in the dark, knees up to my chin in a bus with 50 other people, blissfully ignorant of the fact that Bhutto is dead, that the FARC hand-off has been delayed, that Kenya is bubbling with violence, that Britney's uterus has prolapsed. (Maybe not the last one, though I'd have to check TMZ to be sure.)
As is my routine, I pulled up my e-mail and CNN's "World News" section simultaneously. CNN's top headline and blurb said that Bhutto's son was taking the reins of the Pakistan People's Party following her death. My first reaction was shock. Clearly, Bhutto had been assassinated. I didn't have to read further to know that. For reasons I still don't understand, I felt as though I'd been kicked in the stomach, my body slightly flush, the preamble to dizziness.
I've hardly spent any time in Pakistan, but I've been following developments there for the last few months on CNN and IHT. When I read the headline, it was my emotional reaction which was "shock." It certainly wasn't the fact that she'd been assassinated. That should've surprised no one. In fact, you could make a compelling case for why it was unlikely that she even lasted this long. (She almost got 86'd just hours after she landed in Pakistan the day she returned from exile, for starters.)
In the minutes that followed, as I read the articles about what, exactly, had happened, I started to wonder if it wasn't a positive development. She's now a political martyr in a region particularly interested in martyrs. Green flags flapping in the wind, pilgrimages to her grave site. Bhutto remained popular but was caught up in scandal, partially her own fault, partially because of her husband. She had served the maximum of two terms as prime minister. Now her son, Bilawal, is going to take over the Pakistan People's Party. He's 19 and handsome in trendy frames from Prada or Dolce & Gabbana. He's studying at Oxford, though I'm not sure what that means in practical terms. (Certainly the hallowed halls of such schools have produced their fair share of "Western-educated, moderate, progressive" men who've gone home to become the nastiest of third world despots.) He's got the million dollar sound bite in the articles: "My mother always said democracy was the best revenge."
And of course, "what, exactly, had happened" isn't clear at all. The police prevented the autopsy, the husband prevented the autopsy and said so, the autopsy couldn't have been prevented through normal channels except by a judge's order. Bhutto died because she was shot. Bhutto died of shrapnel from a bomb, even though everyone else in her bombproof car lived. Bhutto died because she ducked back down, through the sunroof, into her car and hit her head on the sunroof latch. The video shows her scarf and hair moving, clearly because of bullets. She had a wound on her head, with bone fragments, indicating X. (Plug in your favorite theory! It's forensics mad libs in the heart of Pakistan!) She was killed in an area of heavy ISI control. She was killed because she had uncovered a plan by the ISI to commit election fraud and was about to turn the information over to US diplomats. Her top security advisor has links to UBL. Oh my.
Reading this in an internet cafe, days after it happened, while the guy at the computer next to me watches porn and shifts uncomfortably in his seat... it makes me feel like I'm missing out on something. What does it matter when I know, how easily I can check multiple news sources? Nothing larger than personal interest, I suppose. At home, my desktop RSS feed would've blared the news within a minute of the CNN or BBC running it. Here, I'm in the dark, knees up to my chin in a bus with 50 other people, blissfully ignorant of the fact that Bhutto is dead, that the FARC hand-off has been delayed, that Kenya is bubbling with violence, that Britney's uterus has prolapsed. (Maybe not the last one, though I'd have to check TMZ to be sure.)
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