Water on the Brain?

You have to have a certain gift to so consistently put your foot in your mouth with unfortunate choices of metaphors.

The office of the President of Pakistan has sent out an official message from him on the occasion of 14th August, which begins with the following words:

“Today is a watershed mark in the history of the country..." 

As if this choice of words at a time when almost a tenth of the all Pakistanis are under water in the biggest floods in recorded memory were not bad enough, please look at the phrasing his message writers then manage to come up with:

“The enthusiasm of the Independence Day this year however has been dampened because of the unprecedented floods..."

Dampened??? Did they actually say this without any sense of irony? You might be forgiven for thinking some juvenile was giggling away in the office while coming up with such atrocious puns. But you may be forgetting the way with words the PPP spokesperson Farahnaz Ispahani has. Remember, it was she who claimed recently in an interview with CNN that the criticism of President Zardari's trip to his French chateau and the UK at the time of such devastation in Pakistan from torrential rains, "would turn out to be a storm in a teacup." Five Rupees has a post on that particular episode, with the clip, here.

On the other hand, why blame Ms Ispahani, when her boss himself comes up with gems such as "storms will come and storms will go" on the same trip.




Can we say that Zardari and his advisers seem more than a little wet behind the ears? Or would we be then accused of being wet blankets?