NOT for the first time, television viewers in the country were ‘entertained’ by a public spat between two politicians. Subsequent footage showed things going physical — though one-sided — after the two apparently felt exhausted by the rather long verbal altercation. I pity the poor lungs!

Though in a different context, a recent letter ‘Accusations galore’ (June 2) rightly pointed out that freedom of speech “doesn’t justify poor choice of words in public”.

I wish the two guests on the show had read that letter, if nothing else, for that alone would have been enough to make them mind their words, especially on national television.

The immediate ‘entertainment’ value of the episode aside, it was actually a sad reflection on a society sliding down the moral, ethical slope, where the tolerance level sinks to a new low every now and then.

Such episodes make lives of parents particularly difficult. How can they teach their children the value of socially acceptable behaviour when they watch apparently ‘successful’ individuals behaving like the way the two guests did on that show, and others like them do on other shows?

We were lucky to have a chance to grow up in a much better society which valued social norms. I often heard from my parents and elders in the household a Bahadur Shah Zafar couplet outlining the mark of a decent human being:

Maybe we need to get back to the habit of keeping in touch with literature which may actually restore our level of tolerance and revive a few ways of expressing our disagreement with the ‘other’ point of view.

Obaida Iqbal Rizvi
Karachi

Published in Dawn, June 15th, 2021