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Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts

Monday, 23 January 2012

Verdict on writing to Swiss govt to be accepted: PM

LAHORE: Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has said if the Supreme Court rules in favour of writing a letter to the Swiss authorities, the government will accept it and implement the verdict.

He also assured that any court ruling about $60 million, lying in the Swiss banks, would also be accepted and implemented. Talking to reporters after the 9th Convocation of the Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) on the university premises, Gilani promised that the government would respect all court decisions. “My appearance in the Supreme Court shows that we respect the court and that the government believes in strengthening the institutions,” the premier said.

Replying to a question, the PM said: “We have a mandate for five years, and I am the first prime minister in the history of Pakistan who has served the country for the longest period without any support from the army.” He said all his actions were in accordance with the Constitution and for the rule of law. However, he termed the opposition’s demand for early elections illogical.

The premier said parliament, and not any other country, would decide the fate of supply route for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) forces, stationed in Afghanistan. He said the supply routes were closed, Shamsi Airbase in Balochistan was got vacated from the US forces and Bonn conference was boycotted by Pakistan after the US-led forces launched an attack on a Pakistani check-post on Nov 28, 2011.

“We did it because we are not answerable to any other country,” Gilani said, adding that Pervez Musharraf had succumbed to foreign pressure and accepted the US demands on a single phone call. He said the issue had been referred to the Parliamentary Committee on National Security. After getting its recommendations, a joint session of parliament would be convened for a final decision. “The government will be bound to follow the decision,” he added.

Gilani said there would be no institutional clash if all state organs perform their duties within their ambit. The PM said a dictator came into power claiming that he would end corruption and poverty, but he failed to do so even after remaining in power for a decade. He claims that the nation was missing him and that he will come back. “But we want to tell the nation that there is no chance of his coming back,” he added.

Gilani said the government challenges the opposition for any upcoming election and would compete with it with full confidence. He said it was the job of the opposition to criticise the government and the people should let them fulfil their duty. Rejecting allegations of the opposition partiesÇ he said the nation knew what the opposition parties had done during their terms in office.

The PM said he would not make tall claims that all problems of the people had been solved. However, he assured that the government would overcome the energy crisis and end electricity and gas loadshedding within six months by resolving the issue of circular debt. He said over 3,300 megawatt electricity had been added to national grid.

Gilani said the government had presented the national economic policy in the National Assembly, and it would be approved after the opposition parties extended their suggestions in this regard.

Earlier, the prime minister addressed the convocation. Referring to his appearance in the Supreme Court on Thursday, the prime minister said in a lighter vein: “Yesterday, I was among the black coats, and today among the black robes (a reference to gowns of the graduating students).”

Agencies add: The prime minister said if the institutions worked within their ambit as defined by the Constitution, then there would be no rift.

Regarding the opposition’s call for an early election in the country, Gilani said the opposition wanted to humiliate the government but it was an elected government’s duty to show magnanimity towards them.

PM Gilani said he had given a policy statement about the economy on the floor of the National Assembly and the government was waiting for proposals from the opposition in this regard. “My government takes pride in the fact that the National Assembly passed a unanimous Bill on National Commission on the Status of Women yesterday,” he added.

Lauding the role of LCWU, the premier called upon the management to produce future leaders and professionals, who could face upcoming challenges. He directed the Federal Ministry of Information Technology to set up an IT campus at the LCWU and asked the university management to prepare PC-I for restructuring and refurbishing of a library in the next ADP.

About the role of the media in today’s Pakistan, the prime minister said he sees it responsible rather than hostile. Prof Dr Bushra Mateen, former vice-chancellor of LCWU, was awarded the title of Professor Emeritus by PM Gilani.


Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Writing About The Midwestern Muslim Experience

"If we want to make media better then we've got to start consuming better media," says Clay Johnson.

Writing About The Midwestern Muslim Experience

"If we want to make media better then we've got to start consuming better media," says Clay Johnson.

Writing About The Midwestern Muslim Experience

"If we want to make media better then we've got to start consuming better media," says Clay Johnson.

Writing About The Midwestern Muslim Experience

"If we want to make media better then we've got to start consuming better media," says Clay Johnson.

Friday, 6 January 2012

Tina Fey On Life, Motherhood, Writing And Comedy

Audio for this story from Fresh Air from WHYY will be available at approx. 5:00 p.m. ET

January 6, 2012

"I was worried about being the mouthpiece for anyone and being politicized personally," Tina Fey says about playing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. "It ended up being a lot of fun, but it did permanently politicize me in a way." Enlarge Platon/HGB USA

"I was worried about being the mouthpiece for anyone and being politicized personally," Tina Fey says about playing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. "It ended up being a lot of fun, but it did permanently politicize me in a way."

"I was worried about being the mouthpiece for anyone and being politicized personally," Tina Fey says about playing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. "It ended up being a lot of fun, but it did permanently politicize me in a way." Platon/HGB USA "I was worried about being the mouthpiece for anyone and being politicized personally," Tina Fey says about playing Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. "It ended up being a lot of fun, but it did permanently politicize me in a way."

This interview was originally broadcast on April 13, 2011. Bossypants is now available in paperback.

Tina Fey grew up in a household with parents she has described as "Goldwater Republicans with pre-Norman Lear racial attitudes."

But, she says, her parents were always supportive of her career, even when she told them she was moving to Chicago to start a career in improv.

"To their credit, they never said, 'You like entertainment. Are you sure you don't want to be an entertainment lawyer?' " she tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "[They understood] me wanting to pursue this before I had commitments, before I had a family. And I think they knew that neither my brother nor I would ever come back to them destitute."

Fey grew up to become Saturday Night Live's first female head writer as well as the star and executive producer of NBC's sitcom 30 Rock. Now, she's also a published author. Her new memoir Bossypants contains her thoughts on juggling her roles as actor, daughter, mother, writer and boss on the sets of both SNL and 30 Rock.

Writing Sketches

When Fey first arrived on the set of Saturday Night Live as a writer in 1997, she says, it initially took her a while to feel comfortable with herself in the writer's room.

"My first week, I completely froze," she says. "I couldn't think of anything. It was just too fast a gear shift. ... So I had some pieces that I had written trying to get the job, and I ended up turning them in. And the next week, I think I was able to write something and turn it in. And the week after that maybe, I wrote something that made its way to the dress rehearsal."

Bossypants

Three years later, Fey began co-anchoring the Weekend Update segment with Jimmy Fallon. She says she enjoyed the transition.

"It's very fun to be a writer at Saturday Night Live, but it's more fun to do both," she says. "When you're a writer and you hit that after-show party, you're exhausted and you maybe combed your hair and you maybe bought yourself something at Ann Taylor. But if you're on the show, you're all fancy. So in that most basic level, it was an upgrade in the job."

But anchoring Weekend Update also meant something else: Fey's sketches could never get cut. "You never have that fear and disappointment that the sketch players have," she says. "And it's the only segment week after week where you look directly into the camera and tell America your name, because a lot of times, I realize now, you see the sketch players in wigs, and if they're new, you go, 'Wait, which guy is that?' On Update, you look like yourself, and every week you say, 'Hi, this is me.' So it's career-changing."

Working With Sen. John McCain

Even as Fey began to do on-air work, she still wrote segments for the show, often helping the guest hosts with their opening monologue and sketches. One of her favorite guest hosts was Arizona Sen. John McCain.

"Sometimes when you have a person all-the-way not an actor, it's just delightful to watch them be game and try," she says. "We all liked him tremendously."

In 2004, Fey and McCain did a nonpartisan get-out-the-vote photo shoot for Life magazine in Washington, D.C., and McCain gave both Fey and her husband a tour of the Capitol.

"[SNL creator] Lorne Michaels always reminds me that Sen. McCain has that [photo] framed in his office," she says. "[Lorne] thinks subliminally that that's why he liked Sarah Palin when he saw her — because he was used to looking at me standing next to him in that picture."

Fey has received seven Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes and four Writers Guild of America Awards. In 2010, she received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, becoming the youngest-ever recipient of that award.

On her birth

"[My mom] was 39 when she delivered me. I think she had had my brother eight years earlier, and then in 1960s medicine, they had told her at some point, 'Oh, no, you're done. Don't even worry about it, dear. You're out of business.' And so I was a surprise."

On the criticism she got for playing Sarah Palin

"You can find this freshly posted as of yesterday. 'She should be ashamed of what she did to Sarah Palin,' which I think is a discredit to both me and former Gov. Palin. She's not fragile. And I'm not mean. And to imply otherwise is a disservice to us both. No one ever said, 'Oh, that Will Ferrell. He should be ashamed of the way he's conducting himself playing George W. Bush.' No one would ever say that."

On working with Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan

"They are different. It's funny because it's rare that we're all three together. The way that things are scheduled, I'll go on and it's either a day of all me and Alec ... or all me and Tracy. It's fun when we're all together ... but we kind of know each other by now, and we know the rhythm of who likes to shoot their coverage first and who likes to wait and go second."

On her mother forcing her to try on a bra over her clothes in J.C. Penney

"At the time it was horrifying. And I developed very early. I was probably in fifth grade getting a bra. I developed breasts so early and so strangely high that the bra was more to clarify what they were. That they were not a goiter or something. It was mortifying, but I can absolutely see making that same mistake because you transition as a mother from literally just pulling a booger out of that person's nose whenever you see one until at some point they assert: 'No, I'm a person. You can't fix my underpants on the subway.' "

On how women present themselves in comedy

"It's just such a tangled-up issue, the way women present themselves — whether or not they choose to put their thumbs in their panties on the cover of Maxim and judge each other back and forth on it. It's a complicated issue, and we didn't go much further on saying anything other than to say, 'Yeah, it's a complicated issue and we're all kind of figuring it out as we go.'

"In the episode [of 30 Rock called "TGS Hates Women"], we have a fake website called Joanofsnark.com that the women at Jezebel.com immediately recognized that it was their website basically and it was ... I don't have the answer. But I find it interesting that Olivia [Munn, a correspondent on The Daily Show] gets people who go after her on some of these sites because she's beautiful, and that's part of it. I think if she were kind of an aggressive, heavier girl with a Le Tigre mustache posing in her underpants, people would be like, 'That's amazing. Good for you.' But because she's very beautiful, people are like, 'You're using that.' It's a mess. We can't figure it out."

On her favorite Saturday Night Live hosts

"Alec Baldwin was always a pleasure [to write for]. Queen Latifah ... and Gwyneth Paltrow has a great ear or instinct for sketch comedy, because you have to make a quick choice and go with it and she was really good. Ben Affleck was really good."

On working with Tracy Morgan

"He's very pleasant. His mood is always pleasant. His health is an issue. He had a kidney transplant this year and he continues to struggle with diabetes, so that's probably the biggest challenge. He's trying and doing his best, but I've had so many conversations with him where I'm like, 'Buddy. You can't have a 20-piece McNugget meal.' And he's genuinely like, 'Really?' And, of course, I don't know what he's supposed to eat.

"But in terms of his desire to be [on 30 Rock] and his attitude, he's always great. I mean, he has a completely different background in terms of training or what he brings than someone like Alec or Jane [Krakowski] who come from the theater. But I feel like I've known [Morgan] a long time now, and I feel like I know how he likes to work, and I like to shoot with him because I feel like I can kind of get his best performance out of him."


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