Name fame

Although I have to declare an interest, by far the most authentic comments about the Bhutto murder were those made by Jemima Khan in the Sunday Telegraph. As Jemima pointed out, Benazir never repealed the Hudood Ordinances, Pakistan’s ‘heinous’ laws that make no distinction between rape and adultery, failed to pass a single major law and ‘kowtowed’ to the mullahs and backed the Taliban, which illustrates to me the bankruptcy of America’s foreign policy. All style, no substance. If Benazir represented democracy I am Oprah Winfrey. And I further agree with Jemima when she writes that, if there has to be a Bhutto as successor to Benazir, it should be Fatima Bhutto. At least the name matches. What pisses me off is the manner everyone refers to Benazir’s son as Bilawal Bhutto. It’s Bilawal Zardari, or, better yet, Mr Ten Per Cent junior. If the kid enjoys the benefit of the alleged $1.5 billion his old man stole from the kitty, the least he can do is use his daddy’s name.

Which brings me to the awful habit of ghastly minor celebrities of using not their correct moniker, but that of a better-known member of their family. For example: Lydia Shaw, whose mother, Patty Hearst Shaw, known for having been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and in turn having robbed a bank at gunpoint, calls herself Lydia Hearst. The fact that her father and mother are married, and it is proper to use one’s father’s name, doesn’t seem to bother her a bit. Hearst is better known, and her father was, after all, just a bodyguard. Ditto one Paris Kasidokostas. He is always referred to as Paris Latsis, his maternal grandfather’s name, and to hell with his old dad, an ex-water-skiing instructor who is mayor of a beachside resort east of Athens.