Newslaundry is exactly one year and one day old today. Screw the cake, let’s take this opportunity to compare how politicians and journalists react to being ribbed.

Can they take it? – is the question we asked ourselves when Newslaundry was on the drawing board (we’re still a work in progress and not even at 10% of the kind of stuff we plan to do). Are journalists too righteous, self-important and insecure to take a bit of ribbing, criticism and trashing? If you’re on Twitter, you’d say – sure they can, look at the abuse they get. But that’s different. It’s easy to paint yourself as a victim when criticism is limited to – Congi stooge, sickular, anti-national, paid media, slut, bitch, whore etc. When the criticism comes from peers with a perceived legitimacy, it’s different. Although the indirect barbs aimed at Arnab Goswami by almost every other anchor in their show are about as graceful as Twitter trolls. You want to call someone out, say the name and say your piece (like Caravan did). These “some anchors are more noise and less news”-type lame ass taunts with eye rolls are as convincing as Renuka Chaudhry aunty doing her favourite “AHAHAHAHA!! Some people seem to know everything” caliber of saas bahu-style debate.

I was part of the team (as writer) that launched the political satire show on NDTV, Gustakhi Maaf (The Great Indian Tamasha) in 2003. I wrote the show from 2003 to 2010. Since no show had really taken the piss out of politicians the way we were planning to, the same question played on our minds. Can they take it? Tehelka was not such a distant memory and NDA was still in power. The templates for our show were two – the French Les Guignols and the British – Spitting Image. The French went so far as to call Jacques Chirac a dickhead! (I only read subtitles so I’m guessing in classy French it sounds sophisticated and acceptable). Spitting Image was famous for pulling viewers year after year since they kept pushing the limits and the audience was “No! They didn’t”. With each gag getting more outrageous, they shocked audiences with their audacity. I believe it was George Carlin who once said – “I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately”. So what lines can we cross here in India where a story on a Robert Vadra will not be done even if there is enough evidence to at least warrant an investigative piece about his business dealings?

Now to try and pull off Spitting Image & Les Guignols-type political satire in a country where the sarkar-aam aadmi dynamic was that of a king and subject, would be hard. Having worked in the world of news since 1995, I had seen some seemingly upright and pompous journalists thrilled to orgasm if a bouquet from the home minister arrived for a wedding or birthday (Oh! Advaniji ne bheja hai). If one’s sense of relevance comes from some dodgy politician nodding at you as he passes, one isn’t exactly creating an environment of free, fearless reporting or commenting.

When we launched Gustakhi Maaf the only marionettes (not puppets, ok?) we launched with were Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Tony Blair and Osama Bin Laden. Safe! No one loves them so much here in India that they’ll create dharna/ban/fatwa-type trouble for us. Manmohan Singh was not in power and… actually he still isn’t. I mean Manmohan Singh was not PM and his love affair with Bush was still some years away. Every week we commented on the Gulf War and war on terror and had a lot of fun with Saddam, Osama, Bush and Blair. The show was noticed, appreciated and did well. Then three states were ready for election – Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi. The next six marionettes were launched Madan Lal Khurana – Sheila Dixit, Digvijay Singh – Uma Bharati and Gehlot – Vasundhara Raje.

Three times a week we did a gag with these six since the run up to any election has enough peculiar moments to have fun with. The show did better. No one was killed, no one was shut down, no ban or demonstration or fatwa (although the gloves were kept very much on. We never said anything too “offensive”). It was a go and we were on a roll and Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi were rolled out to a super-hit response. The amazingly accurate voices complete with the weird Italian-accented Hindi and Vajpayee’s looooong pauses and poetry were a hit.

Now more marionettes needed to be made and since it took about 3 weeks to make one, the choice had to be wise. Venkaiah Naidu was decided upon since he was the president of the BJP with classic lines like “Ek haath mein BJP ka jhanda, doosre haath mein NDA ka agenda” and was hysterically funny even before becoming a puppet. You would remember this was the time of the famous Venkaiah Naidu, Pramod Mahajan, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley rivalry for who was the most relevant of this younger lot. Modi wasn’t the superstar he is now. So we would get to hear from senior reporters covering the BJP that there is much curiosity in the saffron camp as to whose marionette will be made next? It kind of became a status symbol. If you were one of the puppets on the show you were more important.

And how did the journalistic community react? I’d say not as well as the politicians. When we published a caricature of Sagarika Ghose in Newslaundry, we were accused of misogyny! Many friends and well-wishers used the gender googly. On Gustakhi Maaf when we made fun of Sushma Swaraj’s overly made-up, gasp-inducing karva chauth performance (and the puppet version isn’t half as bizarre as her actual ritual) no one cried, “Ah! Sushma the gender victim”. When we had a piece in Newslaundry that merely stated the facts of an alleged plagiarism row with no real editorial position, journo brethren did an outrage taandav.

I guess I am suggesting that politicians (dirty as an unwashed Leftie chappal-wearing journo’s toenails) are more graceful than journalists (clean as a minister’s starched white kurta).

So why are journalists such softies?

Theory 1: A journalist’s currency is his or her credibility. Mocking them or poking holes in their work strikes at the heart of their existence, thus they’re more sensitive.

Not quite: So is a politician’s credibility. In fact, more so. Credibility is everything. Their re-election depends on it. They don’t have a choice and have gotten used to it, is a better explanation. So will journalists, I’m guessing.

Theory 2: It’s a class thing. Most people of the English-medium public school educated upper middle class set are whiners. They haven’t been part of the grit-and-grime that makes politicians thick-skinned and neither do they have the toughness that struggle ensures. Sons and daughter of bureaucrats/technocrats from the comfy you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours upwardly mobile world that Ashis Nandy was speaking of (for which he was attacked by many of this lot) have the style and casual confidence to criticise, attack, mock and lecture – but not the grace to take it if someone gives it back.

The natural question to ask is, can we at Newslaundry take it? We hope so. We try to be harsher to each other in office than we are to those on the outside. Kafila has trashed Madhu Trehan’s interview with Asghar Ali Engineer and Madhu has shared that review on Twitter. The rest of us get valuable and not-so valuable, rude and polite feedback regularly which is great. We also welcome the criticism we get in our Comments section. The only reasons we have disallowed abusive comments is because bad language is so fucking filthy and we are easily offended. No? Ok seriously. The thing is after discussing in great detail, visiting various websites, seeing their comments policy and going through their comments we found that those who did away with abusive comments managed to raise the level of debate among their readers. It’s not because they (or we) are over-sensitive to abuse, but say someone posts a thought-out considered view/critique on an interview/article and a troll dude answers with a “fuck off you pseudo-sickular asshole”. That pretty much ends the conversation, doesn’t it? Unless you come back with a “no fuck you, you deranged internet Hindu vermin” and then there could be another comeback and then anyone with anything sensible to say on the issue will refrain from entering this debate (?), and it will be a loss to us because someone might have had an insightful and intelligent point to make which could have helped us improve. “Fuck you asshole” doesn’t have that effect. And for the more perceptive of you who’ve noticed that I’ve included abuse in this article whereas the Comments policy clearly states no abuse and no cuss words will be tolerated, it’s a good thing I didn’t write this for the Comments section.

A very sound piece of advice I got was from a friend with the unlikely nickname of Grunt while I was at school. I had decided I really wanted to box – brought on by back-to-back viewings of the Rocky series and the thought of being in the ring with boxing gear. Grunt was the school boxing captain, two times my size and four times stronger. Who better to teach me, right? We stepped into the ring. Juniors walking around always stop to stare when they see two guys get in the ring, and when one happens to be the school boxing captain they’ll look forward to some carnage. In less than 10 seconds something happened. It was only a few seconds (Or minutes, I couldn’t tell) later I realised I’d been punched in the face, real hard. For those who don’t know what it feels like, the best I can describe it as is – first you feel nothing. No pain, just disorientation, like not sure which side you’re facing. Then you get a taste of rusty iron (What? Like you’ve never licked an old nail or iron-gate as a kid to see what rust tastes like?) in the back of the throat and then it slowly fills the nose. Then the blood rushes out. And only after a couple of seconds do you feel the pain. So like any brat who liked the idea of boxing and Rocky the film but didn’t fancy a warped bloody nose, I yelled angrily “What the fuck is wrong with you Grunt! What was that?”. Very calmly he told me that rule number one is – “When you box you will be hit hard. And your adversary could be your best friend. So if you can’t take it in the jaw, don’t get in the ring. Just don’t whine for fuck’s sake!” Okay? Please!