Thursday, March 4, 2010

Required: A Healthy Sense of Humour

So how fragile are the egos of the people in government? According to sources, the following Ufone ad (admittedly not one of their funniest) was pulled off air (after a short run) because of grumblings from Those Who Matter over its portrayal of politicos. Since Ufone is a subsidiary of the formerly state-owned Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the resentment over the ad was conveyed in fairly direct manner to the Ufone management.



Ufone has such a quick turnover of its ads on the electroinic media that most people never realized that this particular ad going off air was anything other than routine. But it's probably why you won't find the ad on Ufone's corporate website.

Incidentally, this is not the first instance of Pakistani governments taking personally things that were probably not ever meant to be critical of them. In the mid-1990s, the video of one of pop singer Najam Shiraz's songs was banned on Pakistan Television because, according to reports published then, the government considered it "against the economic policies of the government." In actual fact, the song had merely referred to the exploitation of workers by "the hungry lions of capital."

What's that they say about dil mein chor?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sadly, a sense of humour among most Pakistanis is unheard of, since they prefer to take themselves far too seriously.

fatima-ahtesham said...

Thanks for sharing i really like it